Changes at the Oregon Employment Department might finally provide an avenue for relief during the pandemic
When the Music Stops Gig workers among Portland’s many independent venues are struggling to secure relief. Many also find themselves at a crossroads as they face the uncertain future of an industry the coronavirus pandemic has decimated. From the availability of jobs to the future ownership of small venues, how much of Portland’s once-thriving local music scene will survive?
PART I: Unemployment benefits have eluded hard-hit gig economy workers.
PART II: The independent status of many Portland venues is threatened.
When the Music Stops: Part I
Like so many Portlanders whose livelihoods depend the local music scene, Chris Trumpower was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I went from having five jobs to zero in the course of an afternoon,” said Trumpower, owner of Spectrum Acoustics and the lead sound engineer for both Dante’s and High Water Mark Lounge.
Because he was on the payroll at High Water Mark Lounge, Trumpower was able to apply for unemployment through the Oregon Employment Department, but it was almost a month before he received any information about his claim. Meanwhile, Trumpower, who supports a family of four, had a mortgage and business expenses to pay.
It was only thanks to a “back door” phone number provided by a friend that Trumpower was finally able to reach an Employment Department representative and get his unemployment claim resolved. “She said that it was just sitting there, unprocessed,” he said. “No one had even looked at it in six weeks.”
Many self-employed and independent event contractors have encountered difficulty and confusion while trying to claim benefits, often, in part, because many gig workers did not qualify for regular unemployment prior to the pandemic.
On March 27, President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act of 2020 , a more than $2 trillion economic relief package that included extended benefits for 1099 tax filers and gig economy workers. To implement its Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program , Oregon’s Employment Department created a new, separate system to process and distribute these payments on April 28.
With his claim processed, Trumpower began receiving unemployment benefits for two weeks. Then he received payment from a client with a remaining balance on their bill for equipment they leased prior to the COVID-19 shutdown. Trumpower disclosed this amount on his unemployment insurance form.
“Little did I know that completely canceled my benefits and restarted the process,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been as bad if I just received some notification that had let me know what happened. Instead it took me three weeks to realize what had happened.”
Eventually, Trumpower was able to reestablish his unemployment benefits.
Coco Madrid also faced challenges trying to navigate an overburdened system.
A longtime fixture in Portland’s music scene, Madrid helped establish the groundwork for XRAY FM along with Portland luminary Jeff Simmons. Madrid’s popular Snap! ’90s Party at Holocene recently celebrated its 13th anniversary. Her day job at Simmons’ digital ad agency, Audio In the Trees, included managing social media accounts for Star Theater, Dante’s and The Jack London Revue, as well as creating ad copy and marketing content.
When the pandemic hit, Holocene closed its doors on March 28, and Simmons let his entire eight-person staff go soon after. Just like that, Madrid found herself jobless.
“I’ve never not worked,” she said. “I’ve been working since I was 15.”
Filing for unemployment with a work history that included freelance contract work proved to be frustrating and ultimately demoralizing, Madrid said.
“I don’t know if I’m going to get paid at all, and I don’t expect to,” she said.
Like Trumpower, Madrid also used an individual employee’s phone number she received from a friend to contact a representative directly at the Employment Department. But this ultimately got her nowhere.
Six days after Gov. Kate Brown’s ouster of the department’s director, Kay Erickson, on May 30, David Gerstenfeld, the department’s newly appointed interim director, told KATU News’ Keaton Thomas that automated emails and phone calls had already begun, letting filers know that their Pandemic Unemployment Assistance applications have been received by the department, as well as if and when these applications will be processed.
Gerstenfeld said the department would call applicants if there were issues that needed to be resolved on their claims. He also noted that a new phone line specifically for pandemic assistance claims has been tested, and applicants can now call in to speak with a team member dedicated to this program.
Oregon Employment Department pandemic assistance Applicants who need assistance with pandemic-related claims may call 503-370-5400 or, toll free, 833-410-1004.
Workers eligible for the assistance may also find they are eligible for an additional $600 per week provided through the CARES Act. This Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation benefit is a separate automatic payment of $600 per week. Currently the compensation benefits are payable through July 25.
Filers like Madrid, however, are still stuck in a quandary. With a traditional unemployment claim already in the system, opening a new federal pandemic assistance claim would double her status and effectively invalidate both claims.
Madrid’s initial claim will need to be cleared from the Oregon Employment Department’s system before she can establish a new claim for the other compensation source, a process that requires attention from an Oregon Employment Department representative. Even with the onboarding of new agents, the department is still processing an unprecedented backlog of claims.
A survey conducted by MusicPortland, a nonprofit trade association that advocates on behalf of Portland’s professional music community, found that 95% of its members rated the Employment Department’s communications inadequate or non-existent.
For its part, the Employment Department has acknowledged that it initially did not adequately communicate the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance filing procedures for 1099 workers.
"We did not make a clean pivot in that explanation, or give the best outreach to amplify those new messages once we had them on our own online resources," said Gail Krumenauer, the department’s interim communications director, in a statement shared on MusicPortland’s website .
“People in music wear many, many hats,” said Meara McLaughlin, MusicPortland’s executive director. “What we found, though, is that something like 90% of (musicians) acknowledge that they also have some kind of a day job. Some other thing that they do to cobble-together a living.”
McLaughlin said that these various revenue streams would adversely affect musicians as the federal pandemic assistance benefits claims are processed. If a musician makes $1,000 or more annually from a day job that supplements their income, she said, this amount will invalidate any income made as a musician.
“A thousand dollars a year is two weeks of half time at Starbucks,” she said.
“This is a mixed income gap that is being increasingly addressed, and this isn’t the (Employment Department’s) fault,” McLaughlin said. “That has to be addressed at the federal level.”
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