Utah State AFL-CIO Helps Reduce UI Backlog

Jeff Worthington (IBT), president of the Utah State AFL-CIO, was recently appointed by Gov. Gary Herbert to work with three different state task forces on re-opening Utah’s economy. When COVID-19 hit, unemployment insurance (UI) claims began coming in at such a high rate that the state’s system was overwhelmed. Many applicants were getting kicked out of the UI claims website, and other flaws in the system created a huge backlog. Worthington said it was taking four to six weeks for new claims to be processed. He worked with the task forces to address the issue, helping the state’s unemployment agency to ramp up its capacity and reduce the time to process new claims to two weeks.