Union Unemployment Insurance Fund and Municipal Workers’ Unemployment Insurance Fund criticised for lack of accessibility and service

Summary of the decision: In 2023, the Parliamentary Ombudsman received several complaints about accessibility and service at unemployment insurance funds. The Parliamentary Ombudsman chose to investigate two of them and primarily make general statements.

Both the Union and Municipal workers’ Unemployment Insurance Funds have had problems with high workloads and long processing times over a long period, which has led to, among other things, limited accessibility by telephone in order to free up resources for case handling.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman states that it is the duty of the unemployment insurance funds to ensure there is capacity both for answering phone calls and written messages and for processing cases within a reasonable amount of time. The Parliamentary Ombudsman is of the view there were no special circumstances during the period under review which would have justified setting aside the normal requirements on an unemployment insurance fund in terms of availability and services. Therefore, adequate accessibility and services should have been made available by the unemployment insurance funds during that period.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman also states that it is importance for an unemployment insurance fund to be both reachable by phone and available, which means that waiting times must be reasonable, a high proportion of the calls must be answered and phone hours must be sufficient. The Parliamentary Ombudsman states that the unemployment insurance funds fell short of this during the period under review. In addition, the unemployment insurance funds provide limited opportunities to talk to ordinary case workers and receive answers to questions about specific cases by phone. In view of this, the Parliamentary Ombudsman states that those who contact an unemployment insurance fund must be able to expect someone to answer questions about an individual case and not only general questions. It is also unacceptable to refer individuals who have particular questions to contact the fund in a different way than by phone.