If your boss needed you at a critical time, and she called you to elicit an important piece of information that only you knew, and you hung up on her or said you were not available to take her call, not once but dozen times, what do you think might happen to your job?

Far-fetched?

Not when you realize that the state unemployment compensation division of the Bureau of Labor and Industry has been doing this since unemployed Pennsylvanians have been trying to file claims during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While it borders on the unfathomable, this has been going on in one form or the other for years, but until the pandemic cost more than 1.7 million Pennsylvanians their jobs and counting, the system was masked by strikingly low unemployment and many fewer weekly claims.

Three years before this pandemic, state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale warned there could be a near systemic failure if a major catastrophe produced a tsunami of claims.

In his report, DePasquale said the system is woefully understaffed and relies on antiquated 1970s DOS technology. “To say that it is being held together with bubble gum would be an insult to bubble gum,” DePasquale said in 2017.

The Tom Corbett administration in 2013 signed a $110 million contract with IBM to upgrade the unemployment compensation computer system in three phases, but only two were finished, and the state sued IBM when the contract expired and the project was not complete. The suit is still pending, and IBM denies any wrongdoing.

New plans were undertaken, and the final phase was to have been completed last fall. If it had, we might have a less chaotic situation than we are seeing now, but complications occurred, and the completion deadline has been pushed back to this fall. By the time this new system is up and running, it is expected to cost the taxpayers about $170 million, said state Rep. Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon.

Granted, we can’t expect any government bureaucracy to deal efficiently with a crisis of this magnitude, but that is scant consolation for those who are living paycheck-to-paycheck and trying to put food on their family’s table.

According to Heffley, who describes himself as a “limited government kind of guy,” some applicants have gone six weeks without jobless compensation, and they are getting desperate because they need to go to food banks.

In this frustration, they are calling the offices of local legislators for help or just a sympathetic ear to hear their issues. Heffley said his staff has been fielding calls nonstop, in some cases 35 to 40 an hour, but they cannot go into the state’s computer system to fix problems. Instead, he said, staff members are listening and trying to give help and guidance where they can. Heffley’s staff is tracking 430 cases in his office alone as of May 2.

State Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Schuylkill-Carbon, is finding a similar situation in his office. “The level of frustration and anger among residents who have reached out to us for assistance or answers has been overwhelming,” Knowles said. “I have tried to do all that I can to assist those seeking help. We have been both a punching bag and a shoulder to cry on.”

Referring to COVID-19 as a “bully that is controlling our lives,” Knowles said a lack of transparency by Gov. Tom Wolf and his administration on which businesses are essential and which are not “has hurt us more than has helped us.”

Even when applicants are lucky to get through, they are many times on hold for what seems like a lifetime, get error messages or their calls are dropped.

Department and other state officials blamed this lousy performance on budget cuts, the closing of regional call centers several years ago and the unanticipated severity of the impact of this pandemic on the economy. Staffing was set up to meet unusually low rates of unemployment which existed until February, after which the economy went into an unprecedented tailspin.

We deserve better, and we need to demand better results by one of the most important agencies of state government whose performance has been spotty even under much better circumstances.

Finger-pointing becomes futile now while we are in the midst of this crisis. Heffley, Knowles and other legislators have promised a thorough legislative review of the system once we are in the post-pandemic era.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com