Oklahoma City woman battles to receive unemployment benefits

Two minutes and a computer mix up might have cost Debra Carrick $8,500 in unemployment benefits.

A late appeal after Carrick’s former employer challenged her benefits has turned into a yearlong ordeal for the Oklahoma City resident. But she said the real cost is her confidence in a longtime social safety net and the system used to administer it.

“It’s been over a year and not a penny,” Carrick said. “Lot of heartache. What seems like thousands of hours. Some days I take a break from it, but it’s always one more thing.”

Carrick’s case highlights just one of the nearly 200,000 initial unemployment claims filed in 2010, according to the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission. That number has fallen since a 10-year high of 241,000 in 2009, but remains high as the recession continues to take its toll on Oklahomans.

Carrick, 51, has taken her claim through two levels of administrative appeals and into district court in Cleveland County, where the case is pending.

“People have told me, ‘Why don’t you just give it up and put it behind you?’” Carrick said. “But it just makes me mad and want to fight it more.”

Firing facts in dispute

The facts surrounding Carrick’s last day on the job are in dispute, as they are in many appeals for unemployment claims. Carrick worked almost two years as an accounts receivable clerk for Delco Diesel Services in Oklahoma City. She claims she was fired without cause in January 2010 after an argument with her former boss, David Lanham. According to hearing transcripts, Lanham claims Carrick cursed at him and he fired her on the spot.

That incident started Carrick’s yearlong effort to claim unemployment benefits. State officials wouldn’t discuss the specifics of her case because it’s pending in court, but called it an outlier. They said federal and state benchmarks for the system try to make the process as quick as possible to help the unemployed.

“If you’re unemployed this week, that unemployment check is going to do you a lot more good in two weeks than it will in eight weeks,” said Karl Jahnke, director of appeals for the Employment Security Commission. “If you’re eligible, it’s meant to replace some lost wages. Eight weeks from now, you may have missed a car payment.”

In the unemployment compensation world, the technical term for a worker who has lost his or her job is a “separation.” The employee must file a claim for unemployment either online or by telephone. If they have worked long enough and earned a minimum amount to qualify, they are mailed a notice of eligibility. Employers then have 10 working days to challenge the circumstances of the separation.

Appeals backlog

Separations are grouped into either voluntary quits or misconduct. If they can show an employee quit in some way, employers win appeals more than 80 percent of the time. But the standard for misconduct in unemployment claims cases is higher for employers. Claimants win those misconduct cases more than 60 percent of the time, according to Employment Security Commission data.

Until the recession hit, Jahnke said more than 98 percent of the appeals filed were cleared within 45 days.

“We haven’t been able to do that since 2009,” Jahnke said. “We just got run over, and we’ve been playing catch up ever since.”

Last year, Jahnke’s division heard almost 20,000 appeals, double the number it heard in 2008. The appeals division has gone from nine full-time hearing officers in 2008 to 14 in 2010. Jahnke said an ideal staffing number for the division would be 18 hearing officers.

The administrative hearing process is a little less formal than a courtroom, Jahnke said. Hearing officers, who average about 1,000 cases a year, oftentimes have to be both hand-holder and explainer for those unfamiliar with the system.

“We try to maintain basic due process and fairness so that it runs quickly and there’s not many technical trip-ups,” Jahnke said. “It’s kind of like a little court. It is a formal proceeding. We talk to each other nicely. But this is not ‘Judge Judy.’ There’s no yelling allowed.

“There’s also simply pride involved. We as a society are kind of contentious: ‘You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong.’ People will stand on principle, too: ‘You’re telling me I can’t fire that person?’ ‘No, I’m only saying we can’t deny them benefits.

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