As bills pile up for many jobless workers, state’s ‘dinosaur’ benefits system provides only frustration

For many Massachusetts workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic, the stress of being laid off has been magnified by the Sisyphean effort to navigate a balky unemployment system that has been hammered by more than 2.7 million new claims filed since mid-March of last year….

“They weren’t prepared to address unemployment in regular times,” said Rory MacAneney, an employment attorney at Community Legal Aid in Worcester, which has opened more than 500 unemployment cases since March 17 of last year. “When the system became strained, it was straining an already ineffective and inefficient system.”

…“They can correct a problem with accuracy later,” Leigh Woodruff, litigation director at Community Legal Aid, said of the state. “They cannot correct a problem with promptness later because after months and months without benefits, those families will already be financially devastated in ways that will potentially harm them for the rest of their lives.” Read more in The Boston Globe.