Dear Members,
As many of you know, we remain plagued with problems concerning the government’s new Phoenix pay system. Despite our continued efforts we still have members going without pay or experiencing discrepancies on their pay cheques. This seems especially true if they work shift work or have any irregularities to their pay. We know that in particular our nurses, who provide critical services to First Nations patients and who work long hours on shifts, are being disproportionately affected.
I had the opportunity this week to personally express our members’ concerns directly to Treasury Board President Scott Brison and senior officials from the Secretariat. He has asked us to send urgent and serious cases directly to his officials and they will work to provide help. As with any issue we encourage you to contact your local Employment Relations Officer (ERO) in the regional office nearest to you to relay this information.
I also took the time last week to again write Minister Brison and urged him to take urgent action.
In order to help you pursue pay problems please take the following steps so we can ensure timely follow up to resolve your case. We encourage members who have an issue with their pay to submit all requests by email to the Pay Centre (paycentre.centredepaye@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca), along with the required Pay Action Request (PAR) form. If a request is received without this form or mandatory fields are not completed, it will be rejected by the system automatically and returned to the sender.
To request a status of a Phoenix case that was previously submitted, please complete the Phoenix Case Status Request form. Please also inform your local Employment Relations Officer (ERO) in the regional office nearest to you so we can assist and monitor all problems. I will continue to look for every opportunity to pressure this government to act quickly and effectively to solve pay issues.
Debi Daviau,
President
June 3, 2016
Hon. Scott Brison
President of the Treasury Board
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Strategic Communications and Ministerial Affairs
90 Elgin Street, 8th Floor
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R5
By email: president@tbs-sct.gc.ca
Dear Minister Brison,
I am writing again today concerning the Phoenix Pay System and my members’ timely access to their pay. We have had the opportunity to meet recently with Treasury Board officials and the Deputy Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada to express our concerns. We urge you to continue to find ways to ensure public servants have access to responsive help when they discover problems with their pay.
I have heard from countless members of the pay problems they are facing. These include delayed pay (often over consecutive pay periods), overpayments, and much evidence of a system that is not meeting the multiple pay situations, such as shift work, our members experience. As you can imagine, irregular pay can result in direct payments for mortgages, utilities, childcare and other day-to-day expenses being bounced and resulting in direct costs to our members.
In particular, we are still hearing of cases where employees are not being paid for overtime or acting pay and delays for resumption of pay when they return from a leave such as maternity. Another issue that deserves your immediate attention concerns Records of Employment. We have a number of cases of members waiting for their ROE to be issued so they can apply for Disability Insurance. This problem needs to be given greater priority.
We believe ongoing attention is still required to ensure that all pay and administrative problems employees are facing receives swift action.
The current situation is unacceptable and must be fixed as soon as possible. I look forward to your prompt reply and to learn what steps your department is taking to continue to fix this situation.
Sincerely,
Debi Daviau
President PIPSC