Anderson letter: Unemployment insurance

It’s time to gut the Unemployment Insurance Department — overly funded and highly inefficient — it has outlived its usefulness. Tactics of deny, delay and discredit have dominated the few occasions when I have dared to beg a few hundred dollars from the tens of thousands that have been extorted from my employers over the past 40 years. The process starts with proving I’m not defrauding the fund bearing my name and, if lucky, ends with a nominal “benefit” before time (or my patience) expires.

If truly intended to help workers then workers should control the program. This fund could easily be managed like an IRA, health or education savings account, and travel with the worker. The reason for a job separation should be irrelevant. As it now stands some employees are reluctant to seek a better work situation because quitting usually disqualifies unemployment payments. (Some can’t afford a job transition when denied financial assistance from a program they have essentially funded.) This creates an oppressive and hostile work environment. That’s unacceptable.

The only people who really gain from this mismanaged bureaucratic abyss are the paper-shuffling parasites at the unemployment office with paid vacation, health care insurance and retirement pensions.

It’s ludicrous — enough already.

This story was originally published March 8, 2017 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Anderson letter: Unemployment insurance."