Additional Capacity Needed to Process Hurricane Unemployment and Federal Extended Benefits

AUSTIN — The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) today announced the urgent need for approximately

100 temporary call center workers for its Fort Worth, El Paso, San Antonio and McAllen Unemployment Insurance (UI) Tele-Centers. Applicants should apply for Customer Service Representative II positions on WorkInTexas.com, TWC’s online, job-matching Web site. Workers are needed to increase capacity for incoming calls to Tele-Centers due to Hurricane Dolly Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) and federal extended Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), and in preparation for the potential increase in unemployment claims due to Hurricane Gustav.

            To date, TWC has processed more than 3,300 disaster-related unemployment claims due to

Hurricane Dolly and nearly 60,000 federal EUC claims, in addition to regular UI claims. The agency has added call center workers and toll-free phone capacity, however additional workers are needed.

Disaster-related unemployment benefit claimants may apply online at http://www.texasworkforce.org, but should specify that their claim is disaster-related. Claimants also may call the nearest TWC Tele-Center from Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Standard Time toll-free at (800) 939-6631. Should claimants have trouble getting through on the Tele-Center phone lines, be assured that all claims will be paid retroactively based on the date the claimant qualified for the assistance, not the date the claimant files with TWC.

DUA is available to individuals who:

- worked or were self-employed in or were scheduled to begin work or self-employment,

- can no longer work or perform services because of physical damage or destruction to the place of employment as a direct result of the disaster,

- establish that the work or self-employment they can no longer perform was their primary source of income,

- do not qualify for regular unemployment benefits from any other state,

- cannot perform work or self-employment because of an injury as a direct result of the disaster, or

who became the breadwinner or major support of a household because of the death of the head of household. 
Claimants also can e-mail TWC at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .