Woman battles for unemployment money

Friday, February 15, 2013

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Diane Wilson
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RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Times are tough, and when you lose your job, you're trying to pick up the pieces fast. That's what happened to Christine Rosin. She filed for unemployment shortly after losing her job.

But more than two months after filing, she was still left with no benefits. She quickly grew tired of the frustrating task of logging on to the state's website to file her unemployment claim only to be denied weekly.

"I'm waiting three weeks without anything being in there, that's when I knew it was a problem," Rosin recalled.

The problem was the system showed she was getting a year's worth of severance pay from her former employer. She got a letter from the employer stating that was incorrect, and she said her case worker told her he'd make the correction so she'd begin getting her benefits.

"I don't get it Friday. So, then the next week I think, 'Okay, well it's gotta come the next week because it's Christmas and that just didn't work out and now he's got a few more days.' Nothing, so, January 1, that's when I started calling," said Rosin.

That's when Rosin says she learned her case worker had retired and nothing had been done with her paperwork. She was told she'd have to file an appeal. Meanwhile, she'd been out of work for six weeks with no money coming in.

"Very frustrated, you know - being that I have two boys - that mom's not working," said Rosin. "To just be passed along and passed along, and to say, 'It's gonna be okay.' They keep telling me it's gonna be okay, but they can't give you the answers."

After another month of waiting, Rosin turned to me and we got her a quick response.

"It came down to hours once you had gotten a hold of the letter, and to get with them and to get this cleared up. Hours, and I had an answer from somebody," said Rosin.

Rosin was approved for benefits, and got 11 weeks of back pay starting when she first filed her claim in November.

"He said, 'This should never be happening. I have this piece of paper sitting in front of me. It's as plain as day you're not getting money from your ex-employer.' And this is the same letter that everybody else had seen," said Rosin.

The state says the initial delay was due to an error by Rosin and her former employer. But Rosin told ABC11 that was the first she's heard that.

The state does admit Rosin should have been told to appeal her case as soon as her initial claim got denied. As for the appeals process, a state representative told us it normally takes four to six weeks.