Seven weeks after she filed for unemployment benefits, Nadine Josephs was running out of money. The birthdays of her two teenage children loomed, and she was spending her days pleading for forbearance on overdue bills.
Holed up in her apartment in the East New York, Brooklyn, Ms. Josephs, 46, had grown increasingly frustrated since she filed her claim on March 16. And she was tired of hearing assurances from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to the thousands of desperate New Yorkers like her that the checks would be in the mail.
She had checked the mail, her email and her voice mail: No word from Albany in more than a month.
Between negotiations with the phone company and a furniture-rental company, Ms. Josephs tried every avenue she could think of to draw attention to her plight. She called the New York State Department of Labor at all hours, posted pleas on Facebook and Twitter, and even tweeted daily at the governor himself.
“I’m just praying this can be resolved,” she said in an interview. “My back is against the wall.”
Ms. Josephs was part of the first wave of unemployment claimants who overwhelmed the Department of Labor in mid-March. Since then, the state has received more than 1.6 million claims, including many from gig workers and other independent contractors who normally would not have qualified for benefits.
State officials said they hired more than 3,000 people to help process claims. Roberta Reardon, the New York’s labor commissioner, said the state had paid out $5.8 billion to unemployed residents since the coronavirus pandemic shut down many businesses and ordered most people to stay home.
Mr. Cuomo said on Monday that “the good news is even if there’s a delay on the website, it doesn’t cost you any money.” Everybody who filed a legitimate claim would receive all of their benefits dating back to when they first applied, he said.
But people like Ms. Josephs have been through an emotional wringer. She said the stress of having no income for two months had caused her migraines and led to very dark thoughts. She shared details of her quest to collect the benefits she was entitled to.
Friday, March 13
Ms. Josephs learned that the Lower Manhattan office of the federal agency she worked for, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was closing indefinitely. She had worked there for more than three years, but was not on the commission’s payroll. She had been hired through a staffing agency and remained a contract employee. Ms. Josephs’s supervisor told her that when the office reopened, she could return to work.
Monday, March 16
Ms. Josephs started the day by going to the state Department of Labor’s website to file a claim for unemployment benefits. She was ahead of the stampede that was about to begin.
The night before, Mayor Bill de Blasio had announced that all the city’s restaurants and bars, gyms and movie theaters had to stop admitting patrons at 8 p.m. on March 16. That morning, Mr. Cuomo extended the shutdown statewide, effectively throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
Ms. Josephs said the website told her that she could not complete her application online and that she needed to speak to a department representative. So she began dialing the phone number provided; that was when she realized the process would not be smooth.
“I had to keep on calling,” she said. For days, she woke by 7:30 a.m. so she would be ready to dial at 7:59, just as the phone lines were scheduled to open. Already, the answering message said, the system was overwhelmed. It said to try back later.
Friday, March 20
“I got through,” Ms. Josephs said.
After dozens of failed attempts, a woman answered and asked Ms. Josephs questions about her and her work history. Then, she recalled, “The lady said it was complete and I don’t have to do anything else.”
Ms. Josephs thought she would soon get notice of her first payment. She had collected unemployment benefits once before, receiving about $370 a week, and expected at least that much.
Thursday, March 26
“Then all of a sudden, I get a letter in the mail,” Ms. Josephs said.
The letter from the Labor Department, dated March 20, advised her that she had to provide proof that she was authorized to work in the United States for the previous two years. Ms. Josephs, who immigrated from Jamaica when she was a child, said she mailed back a copy of her green card and also uploaded a copy to the department’s website.
That was the last Ms. Josephs heard from the state. But it was not the last the state heard from her.
Wednesday, April 15
After three more weeks of calling and getting no response, Ms. Josephs started waging a personal campaign on social media.
She took to Twitter, replying to general tweets from the Labor Department’s account. “I need help and a call back to let me know my status,” she wrote, adding, “It’s not my fault.”
Sometime that week, she received her only income in the month she had been out of work: a $1,200 stimulus check from the federal government.
Monday, April 20
Ms. Josephs, sounding increasingly agitated, added Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Reardon, the labor commissioner, as targets of her appeals on Twitter. “Put yourself in my shoes,” she wrote to them. “I cry night and day because if it was up to me I would be at work.”
Wednesday, April 22
Ms. Josephs joined HELP US — NYS Unemployment Issues, a Facebook group seeking to “raise awareness about the current issues” with the state’s unemployment system. It has more than 40,000 members.
She began posting questions about applying for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a program created by Congress in late March to provide temporary benefits to people idled by the crisis who would not normally qualify for unemployment. Ms. Josephs should not have been eligible for that, but she was willing to try anything.
She began asking strangers online to send her money for food.
Monday, April 27
Ms. Josephs decided to try to plea her case directly to the governor. She called Mr. Cuomo’s office, and after two hours on hold, she heard a human voice. That woman tried to connect her to the Labor Department, but the lines were busy. She took Ms. Josephs’s information and told her not to ignore any calls from unfamiliar numbers.
“I broke down on the phone because it’s been weeks trying to speak to someone,” Ms. Josephs wrote on Facebook.
Thursday, April 30
Ms. Josephs tried Mr. Cuomo’s office again and, after a two-and-a-half-hour hold, reached the same woman. The woman told her it appeared that a lot of people who filed claims in March had still not been paid, she said. The woman said Ms. Josephs’s name would go on a “priority list” for a call back.
But, Ms. Josephs said, she was told that if she did not hear back by Tuesday, she should call again.
Monday, May 4
Through a friend, Ms. Josephs reached out to State Senator Shelley B. Mayer for help. Ms. Mayer, a Democrat, represents a section of Westchester County more than 25 miles north of East New York, but she had made a mission of helping people break through logjams in the unemployment insurance system.
“This process has been very challenging for thousands of my constituents,” Ms. Mayer said in an interview. “I am impatient and demanding on the part of these individuals who are at financial risk and emotional risk.”
A member of Ms. Mayer’s staff contacted Ms. Josephs around 11 p.m. and received a response from her by email after midnight, the senator said.
The New York Times also reached out to the Labor Department to inquire about Ms. Josephs’s case, but did not receive a response.
Wednesday, May 6
When Ms. Josephs logged on to the Labor Department’s website, she was stunned to see that her claim had finally been processed. It showed that she was due to receive benefits dating back seven weeks, plus five weekly installments of $600 in federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
Ms. Josephs was thrilled at the prospect of having money to spend on her daughter’s 17th birthday next week and her son’s 15th birthday the following week. “I am truly blessed to say I’m glad it’s over with,” she said.
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