IDES workers logged over 124,000 overtime hours from Jan. - Sept.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WICS/WRSP) — More than 124,000 hours of overtime, equaling more than $6.4 million.

That is what has been dished out to employees of the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) because of the increased need for their services.

Representatives from around Illinois on both sides of the aisle say 124,000 hours of overtime in nine months is not sustainable.

Rep. Kathy Willis, D-Northlake, said it is not fair to the employees or the people of Illinois.

However, IDES said they really had no other option.

From January to September of this year, IDES employees logged 124,359.25 hours of overtime, equating to compensation of $6,422,267.28.

In a statement, the department said:

"As you are aware, the pandemic has placed pressure on unemployment insurance agencies nationwide, and IDES is not alone in having to rely on dedicated, hard-working staff to deliver services to those who need help at historic rates. IDES provided voluntary overtime to those staff willing to work overtime, while at the same time, structuring a plan to rebuild the agency after a decade of headcount losses under previous administrations that were so dramatic, the agency was reduced to roughly half of its size. IDES is grateful for Gov. Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly’s support for this rebuilding effort.

"In addition to rebuilding its headcount, IDES has engaged contractual staff in meeting the needs of claimants, and to help meet requirements related to new programs stood-up in response to the pandemic.

"It is IDES’ goal to have full-time headcount in place to meet all of the demands it faces. In the meantime, we have offered overtime, that is either compensable or awarded in benefit time, to those IDES employees who rise to the challenge and assist with the immense workload after regular business hours. IDES did not have an alternative. Simply put, the work needs to get done, and claimants are demanding results."

In January and February, which were pre-pandemic, the department logged 2,655 overtime hours and $134,356.66 of compensation.

But looking at March and April, those numbers skyrocketed to 30,086.55 hours and $1,539,897.85.

Months later in August and September, the overtime is more than 1200% higher than it was in January and February.

"It tells me that we were desperately understaffed when we started this," Willis said. "I'm very concerned that with that amount of overtime we still have such a back log."

"There are still a lot of problems with IDES," Rep. Mike Murphy, R-Springfield, said. "We need to get them the support that we can."

Willis said the crux of this issue is the lack of employees that the department has. She said with all of this overtime, more progress should have been made thus far.

"I would hope that we would be able to, number one, get the backlog, get caught up," Willis said, "And number two, as that happens, be able to reduce the overtime."

Willis and Murphy both said the solution is to hire more people, get them trained, and get them working.

They said the amount that some of these IDES employees are working is way, way too much.