12 October 2017, Ottawa — Hundreds of public service workers are holding a rally at 12:30 pm today in front of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office to send a clear message to the Liberal government: Enough is enough!
The Liberal government had set itself a deadline of October 31, 2016, to resolve the bulk of pay cases and now, a year later, the Phoenix pay system is still struggling. It’s time to fix Phoenix once and for all and pay damages to the thousands of public service workers who have struggled with the consequences of erratic and insufficient pay and, in many cases, no pay.
The ill-conceived and premature launch of the Phoenix pay system has resulted in severe consequences, despite the estimated $750 million spent so far:
- nearly half of public service employees have had problems with pay, leading to a variety of stressful scenarios for workers and their families
- there have been 11 government-wide breaches of personal information due to Phoenix
- the number of new problematic pay cases continue to grow
“This has gone on long enough,” said Greg McGillis, Regional Executive Vice-President for the Public Service Alliance of Canada in the National Capital Region. “We call on the government to ensure public service workers receive payments for damages due to this unbelievable fiasco.”
“Fixing Phoenix means ending government’s appalling record of over-reliance on IBM and other outsourced services,” said Debi Daviau, President of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. “Parliamentary Secretary Steven MacKinnon said last week that the government would fix this problem to everyone’s satisfaction using public employees. We plan to hold him to that promise.”
Media Contacts:
Alroy Fonseca
Regional Political Communications Officer
PSAC National Capital Region
613-262-3658 | fonseca@psac-afpc.com
Johanne Fillion
Press Officer
PIPSC
613-883-4900 | jfillion@pipsc.ca