Ottawa to open temporary hubs with aim of fixing pay issues by October

theglobeandmail.com
July 28, 2016
By Michelle Zilio

The federal government will open three temporary pay hubs and a new call centre to help the more than 80,000 public servants experiencing pay issues as a result of problems with the new Phoenix compensation system.

It also hopes to have all pay problems resolved by the end of October.

“We are taking so many measures to deal with this issue because it’s totally unacceptable that people go without a paycheque,” Public Services and Procurement Minister Judy Foote told The Globe and Mail in an interview.

“We have to clear up that backlog [of pay problems]. The objective is to do it by the end of October. We are spending the money to do that.”

Speaking at a technical briefing in Ottawa on Thursday, Deputy Minister of Public Services and Procurement Marie Lemay said the first temporary pay hub will open in Winnipeg on Aug. 8 with 20 compensation advisers, growing to 50 in the following weeks. She said the hubs in Montreal and Shawinigan, Que., should be up and running by mid-August, with 20 compensation advisers at each location.

The hubs will be in addition to the central pay centre in Miramichi, N.B., which employs about 600 workers, and another recently opened temporary pay centre in Gatineau, Que., where 57 compensation advisers are currently handling cases. Ms. Lemay said the Gatineau centre will grow to 115 staff in the coming weeks.

The government also announced the opening of a call centre in Toronto, where 100 temporary employees have been hired to “triage” calls from public servants to help take the pressure off Miramichi.

“Call-centre agents will be able to provide updates on when pay requests will be addressed and how long it will take to be resolved,” Ms. Lemay said.

Unlike the compensation advisers in Miramichi, Gatineau, Montreal, Shawinigan and Winnipeg, the Toronto call-centre staff have no security clearance. Ms. Lemay said there is no security concern, though, as the employees do not have access to employees’ personal information.

The security concerns come in light of recent privacy breaches linked to Phoenix. The federal Privacy Commissioner has announced a formal investigation into one of the breaches earlier this year in which several managers in different government departments reported being able to see personal information of employees from other departments.

The temporary pay hubs and the Toronto call centre are expected to cost the government between $15-million and $20-million, Ms. Lemay said.

The government also presented a specific timeline for resolving the pay issues on Thursday, broken down by three priority levels.

The immediate priority is dealing with the 720 public servants who have missed entire paycheques. Nearly 500 of them were paid on Wednesday, and Ms. Lemay said most of the remaining will be paid on Aug. 10.

The second priority is the 1,100 people who have left the public service and have not received compensation, such as severance pay. The government plans to address those cases within four to six weeks.

Finally, the 80,000 public servants waiting on supplementary pay, such as overtime or pay increments, will be fully compensated by the end of October at the latest.

The House of Commons government operations committee held an emergency meeting on Thursday to examine the Phoenix problems, where MPs heard about the poor morale at the Miramichi pay centre.

“They [staff in Miramichi] found an employee in the bathroom crying the other day,” Government Services Union national president Donna Lackie said. “I’ve asked that on-site mental-health experts be brought in to support the workers in Miramichi.”