Shelby Meyenburg has important advice for the leaders of the new Congress: Leave the unemployment insurance (UI) merit system alone.
Meyenburg is an unemployment specialist for the state of Washington and a member of the Washington Federation of State Employees (AFSCME Council 28). He testified at a congressional hearing on Thursday focused on rooting out fraud and abuse in UI programs.
He said highly skilled and well-trained UI workers prevent fraud and abuse. Outsourcing or privatizing the UI system leads bad service and makes the system vulnerable.
According to a Government Accountability Office report, $100 billion was lost to UI fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only $5 billion of that has been recovered, according to the Department of Labor.
“As a UI worker, I both help Washingtonians receive the unemployment insurance benefits they need but also help safeguard the UI system against fraud. My goal is to get the right benefits to the right people on time,” Meyenburg said.
He argued such an important job shouldn’t be turned over to poorly trained contractors who don’t have unemployed workers’ best interests at heart. His job requires thorough training and professionalism that only career public service workers bring.
To illustrate his point, Meyenburg — now an expert UI “ambassador” for his state — told his own story.
In April 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, he began working at a UI claims center as a “non-permanent staff” member, or contractor. Some non-permanent staff were thrown into the work with minimal training — two weeks at most — compared to the standard six to eight weeks.
Despite getting promotions, he was laid off from his non-permanent position in spring 2022 — and went on unemployment himself. That experience underscored the real struggles of surviving on a reduced income and the importance of the services he delivered.
But the good news is he got hired back into the UI program in July 2022, this time securing a permanent merit-staff position.
“I hope that when Congress considers reforming the UI program or addressing UI fraud, you see the value in merit staffing in the UI system. We are the foundation of a strong and secure UI system,” Meyenburg said.
Helping unemployed people get the benefits they deserve and find work quickly is too important to be left up to cronies and private companies more interested in making a buck than helping people.
“To do our jobs effectively, we have to be highly skilled and well-trained,” said Meyenburg. “This work is critical to our economy and our country. It should not be automated, assigned to staff with substandard training, or outsourced.”