SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — An agreement was reached between the Employment Development Department (EDD) and several advocacy groups on Monday. As a result, the EDD will be stepping up their language services to help non-English speakers solve their unemployment problems more easily.
Sacramento’s Center for Workers' Rights was one of the groups that were a party to the agreement. Executive Director Daniela Urban told ABC10’s Dollars and Sense team that some improvements already are underway.
“So currently, EDD staff is being trained on their new policy that requires immediate interpretation to be provided over the phone,” said Urban. “And then as EDD continues to make improvements, there will be additional changes to written materials as well as online materials.”
Urban said translation services via phone will be helpful, but it will be changed to printed materials and webpages that will ease the access gap which many face.
“Because written materials provided by EDD are only in English and Spanish, those who do not speak those two languages — or do not read those two languages — must access their benefits through the phone lines,” Urban said.
That has caused a lot of problems since the pandemic began in March 2020, and the EDD’s call center was overwhelmed by millions of calls.
“When those lines got jammed, it prevented any access for these claimants to either file or continue to access benefits throughout the pandemic,” said Urban.
According to the EDD, in addition to beefing up their translator services for callers, they're also working on providing dedicated lines for Armenian, Korean, and Tagalog. Lines already exist for Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese.
Some of those critically needed upgrades will take time.
“As EDD continues to make improvements, there will be additional changes to written materials as well as online materials, as EDD is able to implement those changes over the next couple of years," said Urban.
