PHS director to exit; union condemns new payroll system

The revolving door in the executive of the PHS Community Services Society is swinging once again.

The non-profit society’s executive director Jennifer Breakspear will be leaving on Jan. 31, 2019, two years after she took over the troubled organization, formerly known as the Portland Hotel Society.

Breakspear is the third executive director to leave the PHS since the provincial Liberal government ousted its longtime heads Mark Townsend and Liz Evans in 2014.

Townsend and Evans built PHS into a social housing and social services powerhouse that operates 22 facilities and projects in Vancouver and Victoria, including Insite, a safe-injection site for drug users it runs with Vancouver Coastal Health. Its budget for 2018 is $46 million.

Breakspear wasn’t talking to the press Thursday. But she leaves in the middle of an opioid crisis that has decimated the Downtown Eastside.

She also leaves while the society is having big problems with a new payroll software system. In 2017, PHS paid out more than $20 million in wages.

The president of the union representing 500 to 600 PHS workers said the new payroll system had been “a debacle” and “a complete disaster.”

“Implementation started a few months ago, (and) right off the bat there were errors,” said Andrew Ledger, of CUPE 1004.

“People not being paid, people not being paid the right amounts, people not being paid at the right rate of pay. But in addition to that, most of the folks who have had a payday correction (had more problems).

“If you went to the employer and (they said) ‘Oh we underpaid you by $400, we’ll cut you a cheque for $400 to correct it.’ Well, when the next payroll cycle comes through, that $400 would be viewed as an overpayment and taken off their next cheque, so they’re caught up in the system again.”

Ledger thinks the new payroll system was implemented too quickly, and management had been slow to respond to problems.

“(They need to) take some responsibility for the fact that they are really negatively impacting a significant number of their staff in the midst of a housing crisis, and an affordability crisis,” he said.

Ledger knows this first hand, because he worked as a “detox coordinator” at Insite for PHS for six years. He said the stress of working in the Downtown Eastside can be overwhelming.

“You give your heart and soul to the work,” said Ledger.

Ledger doesn’t know why Breakspear decided to leave. But he said since the provincial government started appointing executives at the PHS in 2014 there had been problems.

“I can say when Mark and Liz were there, there never was an issue with payroll,” he said.

Reached in New York, Evans said running the PHS “is a complicated job.”

“I think it’s sad that there has been such high (executive) turnover, because it doesn’t leave the staff feeling supported, which is the biggest issue for me,” said Evans, who now works for the harmreduction organizations New York Harm Reduction Educators and Washington Heights Corner Project. “Staff are working incredibly hard to try and do everything they can to serve people and respond to all the things that are happening. They’re on the front lines in the midst of daily tragedy.”