Dear colleague,
We’re writing again only to the faculty work-sharing participants who have to apply by phone because you don’t have a New Jersey driver’s license or state ID. Thank you to the more than 100 of you who responded on Wednesday when we asked for anyone whose status was still “pending” and who hadn’t talked to an NJDOL agent to fill out our Google form (if you missed the Google form on Wednesday, you can still fill it out by clicking here).
We used your responses to produce a new list of work-sharing participants (with phone numbers we know are good) that is being submitted to the New Jersey Department of Labor (NJDOL). We’re asking the department to have agents call people on this list to get the information they need to approve your applications for unemployment payments.
Last week, when NJDOL started calling faculty who have to apply by phone, many of you managed to pick up the call, answer the agent’s questions, and get your applications processed. But a number of you could’t pick up or weren’t called at all, and the follow-up calls appear to have stopped this week. So we’re trying another route for getting your cases addressed.
Though the new list will be in NJDOL’s hands this morning, we don’t anticipate that agents will begin calling right away (to be fair, NJDOL has many other cases to deal with). It’s more realistic to expect calls to come early next week.
But we have no way of knowing for sure, so we have to repeat our advice from last week: Try to pick up calls to the preferred phone number you entered on the Google form. The NJDOL calls may come from unknown or blocked numbers (watch for these two numbers especially: 732-761-2020 and 201-601-4100). If you do talk to an NJDOL agent, answer their questions and ignore any misinformation about whether you’re eligible or need to certify.
This has been a very frustrating process, especially being asked to wait repeatedly. We hope we have found another route to get more of your cases addressed—and we will keep up those efforts until all work-sharing participants are approved and getting payments.
In the meantime, for those of you who are worrying about financial problems because of the delays in getting approved for unemployment payments, we want to remind you about the union’s Work-Sharing Loan Program. The program requires you to fill out a simple Google form to start the process. Please email us at aaup@rutgersaaup.org if you would like access to the form.
The Loan Committee will review the application for approval, and if necessary, we will reach out to you for more information. The loan amount would be a paycheck completion sum to recover the 10 percent of your paycheck missing due to furloughs. Once approved, we’ll send over our loan agreement and rules, and we can work together on getting your funds to you as quickly as possible.
In solidarity,
Todd and Becky
Todd Wolfson, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rebecca Givan, Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Union merch is now available at our web store! Order today at: https://rutgersaaup.myshopify.com.
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @ruaaup
Freedom School YouTubeChannel: https://rutgersaaup.org/YouTube
Find the latest messages to members and union statements here.
Watch Todd’s video on the battles for our union today.