Macomb Today

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tragic impact on our community and the entire state. There have been over 62,000 cases statewide and more than 5,800 people have lost their lives. We’ve had more than 7,000 cases and over 860 deaths here in Macomb County.

The virus has also taken a tremendous toll on the livelihoods of millions of Michigan workers. Unemployment is up across the country due to COVID-19, but Michigan has been among the hardest hit.

Over two million people in Michigan lost their jobs, and our unemployment rate skyrocketed to 24% in April — the second-highest rate in the country and the worst since the Great Depression.

State Sen. Michael D. MacDonald | Senator MacDonald's government website

Our 21% unemployment rate in May is still the third-highest in the country.

If that wasn’t bad enough, under the governor’s poor leadership, the Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) failed to quickly process claims and provide people out of work with the necessary assistance to support their families.

Unfortunately, the UIA couldn’t handle the record-setting surge of people losing their jobs due to the governor’s shutdown, and the governor didn’t act quickly enough to put more resources and staff into the UIA to help unemployed workers get the assistance they need to make ends meet.

I continue to hear stories from struggling and upset local workers who are still unable to file their claims or who have yet to receive critical benefits.

The UIA has been unresponsive to the people they serve and has mismanaged potential fraud in the system — halting payments to 540,000 residents without any warning or regard to the impact on their lives. As of June 23, about 120,000 Michigan workers still had not received their unemployment benefits.

Unemployed Macomb workers are understandably frustrated. While the governor still refuses to allow some of them to return to work, she has demonstrated a lack of preparedness, responsiveness and leadership in addressing issues at the UIA to support our unemployed workers. They deserve better.

I sponsored Senate Resolution 132 to condemn the governor’s failure to fix the UIA problems and urge her to sign the supplemental budget bill we passed to immediately hire 500 temporary employees at the UIA to help unemployed workers and their families.

This situation is unacceptable and was preventable. It was a failure of the governor to understand the gravity of the problem and take quick and decisive action to fix it.

Sen. Michael D. MacDonald, R-Macomb Township, represents Michigan’s 10th District.