ORLANDO, Fla. – Central Florida hospitality workers are voicing concerns with lawmakers about the state's troubled unemployment benefits system.
During an online listening session on Monday, Sen. Victor Torres, Rep. Amy Mercado and Kissimmee Mayor Jose Alvarez spoke with workers represented by two local unions.
"Central Florida hospitality workers are in a real crisis right now because the unemployment system is broken," union president Jeremy Haicken said.
During the conference, Lynne Reback spoke about how she was laid off from Ruby Tuesday's on March 20 and hasn't been able to get financial help since.
“It took me three days to be able to log-on and get through the application,” she said. “I have not spoken to one single person who’s received a check. No one. It’s very frustrating.”
The democratic lawmakers called on the governor to take further action to fix the application process.
"It shouldn't take this long," Mercado said. "It shouldn't take this effort to help them."
They also asked that benefits be applied retroactively and they're pushing for the state's benefits cap to be increased past the $275 per week threshold.
“How can a person live on $275 a week? It doesn’t make sense with the cost of living of today,” Torres said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed the unemployment benefits system during a round table discussion late Monday morning.
"People have lost their jobs, they're looking for relief and they're having a lot of difficulty," he said. "It was timing out. It was totally unacceptable."
DeSantis said an additional 72 servers were installed over the weekend to boost the capacity of the website, which he said can now handle 120,000 simultaneous unemployment claims.
The governor did not address the other requests by state democrats, but said an additional 2,000 state workers have been identified to help process claims. He said those workers will be able to work from home at a virtual desktop to take phone calls and enter data to help with the backlog in the state's system.
“We want this system to be accessible to people, so that they have a way to do it and it’s responsive,” DeSantis said.
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