Phoenix causes ‘great hardship’ for 1 in 5, PSAC survey shows
More than 80 per cent of federal workers say they’ve been affected by Phoenix pay issues and nearly 20 per cent say it’s caused them “great hardship”, according to a poll commissioned by the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
The survey also showed that PSAC members had avoided asking for leave or turned down a chance for an acting assignment because they feared the troubled system would mess up their pay.
“The unfortunate is that the brightest and the best are being held back. No one wants to change their position for fear that they’ll be Phoenixed,” PSAC national president Robyn Benson said in an interview Tuesday. “They’re not taking an acting (position), they’re not going to take a different position ... and the government is losing out.”
The PSAC study comes on the heels of the government’s annual Public Service Employee Survey, which found that two-thirds of the more than 174,000 public servants who responded said they’d had Phoenix pay problems. Of those, 34 per cent reported they’d been underpaid, 18 per cent were overpaid and 22 per cent said they were missing pay.
Ninety-three per cent of those in the federal survey said they had worked on their own time to deal with Phoenix issues. Half of those said they ’d spent one to nine hours of their own time and 14 per cent reported spending more than 40 hours trying to resolve pay issues.
“The public service employee survey and our survey said the same thing. Their employees and our members are spending hours of their own time on Phoenix,” Benson said.
The pay woes have added up to hardship and mental anguish for PSAC members, the union says, with 23 per cent reporting Phoenix had had major negative effect on their mental health and 53 per cent saying it had some negative effect. Twelve per cent reported that Phoenix had had a major negative effect on their ability to work and 17 per cent said the same about the pay system’s effect on their personal lives.
“You can’t not be affected if you
No one wants to change their position for fear that they’ll be Phoenixed.
don’t know if you’re going to get paid or whether you’re going to get paid too much or too little or not at all,” Benson said. “It’s an anxiety I can’t even imagine.”
Among those who reported Phoenix problems in the PSAC survey, 55 per cent said they had not received entitlements they were owed, 40 per cent said they were underpaid for one or more pay periods, 31 per cent said they were overpaid and 22 per cent said they received no pay at all in one or more pay periods. Other complaints included incorrect deductions, problems with retroactive pay, maternity pay, disability leave, or vacation or leave days that were calculated incorrectly.
One in four of those surveyed said they had delayed transferring or pursuing new opportunities because of Phoenix, 24 per cent had avoided asking for leave and 20 per cent had turned down an acting position. Six per cent said they’d delayed their retirement because of Phoenix.
Nearly one in three said Phoenix had caused them an inability to file their taxes correctly, 29 per cent said they’d incurred out-ofpocket expenses, 28 per cent said they had cancelled a vacation or other personal activity and 10 per cent said Phoenix had made them unable to make rent or mortgage payments.
The online survey was conducted by Environics and sampled 2,053 PSAC members between Feb. 13 and 27. Results are considered accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Responses came from across the country, with 334 of them, or 16 per cent, from the National Capital Region. PSAC members at Employment and Social Development Canada made up 17 per cent of the respondents, the highest number from any department. The department with the second-highest number of respondents? Canada Revenue Agency.