CANADA
Canadian Public Servants have taken to the streets to mark the third anniversary of the launch of the country’s disastrous Phoenix payroll system.
In that time the botched system has underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all tens of thousands of Government workers.
The workers’ union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) held events across the country aimed at pressuring the Government to take more concrete action to reduce the Phoenix pay backlog.
A Vice President of the PASC, Colleen Coffey said she had documented examples of people who had lost homes, cars and credit ratings because of Phoenix.
“I never thought we would still be protesting against Phoenix after all this time, but the fact is it’s not going to go anytime soon, because there’s not a company who will do our payroll,” Ms Coffey said.
President of the Prince Edward Island Council of PSAC, Dan Aiken said he didn’t receive pay for several pay periods.
“That’s a scary feeling because when you don’t get paid on payday you can be in hardship pretty quickly…then the next payday comes round with no pay and you really start to panic,” Mr Aiken said.
Government officials said fixing the Phoenix payroll problems were a priority and it was working to reduce the massive backlog of pay issues. Even so, there were about 275,000 unresolved transactions at the end of January.
Ottawa, 2 March, 2019
