ORLANDO, Fla. — A rallying cry for help.
On Friday, people gathered in Orlando to get lawmakers to act and, as they say, stop ignoring the broken unemployment system.
Hundreds of thousands of Floridians have waited two months now with their unemployment statuses still "pending" or incorrectly denied and they are desperate for financial help.
"I tried to buy some gas and my card was declined. It's a situation I've never been in before," Judy Tanzosch, who lost her job two months ago said, "Bills don't wait. The mortgage company is not waiting, the late fees on rent payments are accruing, credit card interest is accruing, cars are getting repossessed."
These stressors are a harsh reality after she lost her job. She's afraid she'll lose her home after her unemployment claim took 45 days to enter and still hasn't been processed. Her frustration pushed her to rally on Friday for change.
"If this wasn't a problem we wouldn't need to be here and rally. If the governor would have taken the warnings for years in advance that the unemployment system was broken and done something about it, we wouldn't be desperately struggling," Tanzosch said.
She and many other Floridians are now in crisis mode. Their signs read: "Fix it Florida" and "I am not my unemployment number." While the group is small, they stand for many.
"People are still afraid to come out and participate. They don't want to be associated with the stigma of unemployment," Tanzosch said.
But that won't stop Tanzosch from going to another rally - this time in Tallahassee - on Thursday for the class action lawsuit against the state to pay out unemployment benefits immediately. She says if they don't rally for lawmakers attention to act, nothing will change.
"We would like our rally to coincide with when the attorneys are fighting for us. To get the word out there to lawmakers and the judge that this is an emergency financial crisis for us and we can't continue to wait. The bottom line is workers can't wait any longer," Tanzosch said.
More than 1.5 million unemployment applications have been filed but barely a third of them have been acknowledged. Florida is the slowest state in the country in processing unemployment claims.
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