Justice for New Mexico's Unemployed Workers

We call upon you to take swift and effective action to fix the problems in the unemployment claims insurance system. Since the holidays started, unknown numbers of unemployed workers have been unable to access the system.
The system has been down for a month. Phone lines are so busy that access is almost impossible. Some of us have been put on hold for 6 hours; most of us never even got a chance to be put on hold. This is unacceptable.
To many officials and the public, unemployed workers are invisible. They dont see, hear, or read about us when we give up looking for work. They dont know when we get evicted or get our utilities shut off. We will refuse to silently suffer as the UI system we depend on causes disruptions in our lives.

We call on you to:

(1.) Staff the unemployment office with enough people so as to be able to process unemployed workers claims in a reasonable amount of time. Most people are in and out of other government agencies in less than an hour. Unemployed workers are not second-class citizens and should not be treated as such.

(2.) Guarantee that no worker shall be denied retroactive benefits if they attempted to file a claim during the time in which the system has been swamped.

(3.) Pay any late fees which workers dependent on UI benefits have incurred as a result of the system being swamped.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.