PSAC PRESSES FOR PAY HIKE
Phoenix compensation also on table
The country’s largest public service union wants the federal government to compensate its members for the pain and suffering inflicted by the Phoenix pay fiasco.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada resumed bargaining this week with Treasury Board officials on a new three-year contract for 90,000 public servants.
The union has asked for a 3.75-per-cent wage increase in each of those three years, along with a Phoenix compensation package and a public inquiry into the introduction of the problem-plagued pay system in 2016.
“We’re looking for recognition that basically all employees have been affected by the Phoenix pay fiasco,” said Greg McGillis, regional executive vice-president for the National Capital Region.
Symptomatic of that fiasco, he said, is the fact that whatever wage increase is negotiated is certain to add to the backlog of payroll complaints. Last year, more than 8,000 new pay complaints were generated when the government implemented a dozen new collective agreements.
“It does highlight the fact that almost everything is in question with Phoenix,” McGillis said, adding: “It’s unlikely that Phoenix will ever work entirely properly.”
Public servants at the federal pay centre, he said, are now jury rigging solutions using Excel spreadsheets and bits of computer code:
“Those aren’t practical solutions, and it’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to fix the backlog. It doesn’t seem like the system can be altered.”
Based on its own surveys, PSAC estimates that 90 per cent of federal public servants have been affected by mistakes on their paycheques: overpayments, underpayments and other errors.
Last month, auditor general Michael Ferguson released a report that showed 187,000 public servants from 46 departments and agencies had outstanding pay action requests as of June 2018. (A total of 101 federal department and agencies use Phoenix.) The number of affected workers has skyrocketed since March 2016, when 54,000 such pay requests were in the system.
The federal public service has 273,000 employees, about 41 per cent of whom work in the National Capital Region.
Ferguson said the Phoenix situation did not improve in the past year. A payroll sampling by his office found that 58 per cent of employees reported errors on their paycheques in the 2017-2018 fiscal year, compared with 51 per cent the previous year.
In an earlier report, Ferguson canvassed the errors that led to Phoenix: A small management team within Public Services and Procurement Canada failed to obtain independent advice, paid little heed to the concerns of end users, ignored mounting risks, and chose to strip key software features from the system when faced with escalating costs. They also did not test the system as a whole.
McGillis said PSAC members have been traumatized by the debacle, and often refuse to move jobs for fear their pay will be interrupted. It’s a significant problem for public servants who are moving between provinces.
“Changing from Gatineau to Ottawa is now a big deal,” he said.
McGillis would not discuss what kind of compensation package PSAC is seeking from the government.
A spokesman for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat said the government is exploring the issue of compensating employees affected by Phoenix. “Canada’s public servants deserve to be paid properly and on time for their important work and we are taking action on all fronts to resolve these pay issues,” said Martin Potvin.
The government, he said, wants to reach timely agreements that are fair both to employees and taxpayers, but he declined further comment on the negotiations “out of respect for the collective bargaining process.”
One public servant, Sebastienne Critchley, told the Citizen she is “completely disheartened” after more than two years of pay problems. “I just sat at my desk crying yesterday,” she said Tuesday. “I don’t have any emotional energy left to deal with it.”
Critchley, a payment services officer with Service Canada in Edmonton, has been plagued by overpayments and excessive recoveries since April 2016. She thought the problem had been solved in the past few months until her most recent paycheque arrived with a net pay of $268.44. Critchley had worked 30 hours during the pay period and was anticipating a cheque of more than $920.
“I hate the fact that I have to take time away from either my work or my family to try to resolve this,” she said. “I think it’s reasonable to expect my employer to pay me accurately and on time.”
PSAC bargaining teams are negotiating collective agreements for four employee groups: program and administrative services, technical services, operations services and education and library services. Negotiations this week will cover proposals specific to each of the four groups. Common issues will be covered in sessions scheduled for next week.
McGillis said the union will also ask the government to address issues related to what he calls its “massive army” of temporary workers.
Government statistics show that about 13 per cent of the federal workforce involves term or casual employment.
PSAC believes the actual number is considerably higher, and McGillis said that if left unchecked, tens of thousands of federal employees will never enjoy full benefits, union protection or job security.