SALEM — The Oregon Employment Department plans to begin requiring employees to wear masks at its call centers and claims processing facilities after a succession of coronavirus outbreaks that infected 13 employees and, last week, shuttered its Gresham facility.

The infections have exacerbated the problems at the troubled agency that has struggled to pay jobless benefits since the pandemic hit Oregon in March. Tens of thousands of claims are outstanding.

“We continue to feel the impact of the pandemic and at the employment department we’re fighting this pandemic on two fronts right now,” said interim director David Gerstenfeld, citing the economic impacts as well as the infections among his own staff.

Oregon requires people to wear masks indoors in public settings, like a grocery store, but not in offices. Nonetheless, many other employers have already required masks among their own staff. Gerstenfeld said the department had been following health department advice and encouraged employees to wear masks, but ultimately concluded it needed to do more to stop the outbreaks.

“Things that we had hoped would be safe were not stopping the spread of the virus as much as we’d hoped,” he said on his weekly media call on Wednesday, July 15. Gerstenfeld said masks will be mandatory once the department has a supply of them to distribute to workers — he said he expects delivery soon.

Gerstenfeld acknowledged that the infections will further slow the processing of claims. But he indicated the impact on the claims system may be modest, since the department began a telework pilot program this week after previously requiring claims processors report to the office throughout the pandemic. Employees from the shuttered Gresham office are the first to work remotely.

Allowing remote work is one of several steps other states’ employment agencies took early in the pandemic that Oregon is now adopting. Others include:

• Working with Google to improve the claims process: Within the next few days, the department plans to launch a new system developed by Google to process claims for self-employed workers, who are newly eligible for benefits. Gerstenfeld said the Google-based system will provide applicants with more guidance and reduce the number of technical errors that are slowing claims processing.

• Callbacks: The employment department’s phone lines have been hopelessly jammed since the pandemic hit in March. But phone calls remain the only way to resolve many claims. Last week, the department posted an online form for people who have had been waiting for many weeks for their benefits to request a call from the department to address specific issues. Gerstenfeld said the new form will enable the department to prioritize those who have been waiting the longest.

• Relief payments: Oregon lawmakers approved a $35 million program Tuesday, July 14, to make $500, one-time payments to people who have been unable to resolve their jobless claims. But it’s not clear who will be eligible for the payments, and state administrators say it will be at least six weeks before the program is up and running.

Also on July 15, Gerstenfeld said the department failed for the second straight week to meet its target for processing benefits claims for self-employed workers, who are newly eligible for benefits under the federally funded Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. He said changes the department hoped would speed the processing of these new claims haven’t worked as well as intended.

That leaves approximately 55,000 people waiting for PUA benefits — many have gone without income since Congress created the program in March. However, Gerstenfeld said the department still hopes to meet its goal of clearing that backlog by Aug. 8.

This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.