Join the Eligibility Worker Industry Council on Monday, March 19, at 5:45 p.m. at your local SEIU 521 office. The council is open to all account clerks, job specialists, office assistants, eligibility workers and all the members that help provide these essential services to the public who needs them. Call your local office to RSVP!
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After a Santa Cruz County Eligibility Worker was rushed to the hospital for work-related stress, co-workers held a solidarity action March 8 to support their colleague and to shine the light on an ongoing issue: Overburdened workloads and extreme work stress that are pushing employees to the breaking point.
The Eligibility Worker at the Watsonville Call Center was taken to the hospital because of the stress of having to complete 1,000 tasks.
Thirty co-coworkers came to a last-minute solidarity unity break March 8.
“We felt it necessary to show support for our co-worker and to bring to management’s attention the need for a real conversation with real solutions that will improve working conditions and still meet the needs of the community. We became Eligibility Workers to help people.”
— Dianne Medina, Eligibility Worker
Currently, Eligibility Workers in Watsonville and Santa Cruz are faced with managing unrealistic workloads. Call Center Eligibility Workers must perform up to 1,200 tasks. Eligibility Workers III must manage up to 80 cases and also perform up to 1,200 tasks.
Workers are timed on phone calls and questioned why they took so long on the phone to help a client.
Vital public services are impacted when workers are overwhelmed with workloads and placed under extreme stress. To provide quality community services, it’s time management address this issue.
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Take action:
Join the Eligibility Worker Industry Council
Fill out the Eligibility Worker survey
