As mentioned in previously communications, the AJC has used virtually every available mechanism to put pressure on the Government in close collaboration with the other bargaining agents.
Employment issues for federal servants fall under the PSLRA. This legislative framework is different from the common law and differs from many of the employment law or tort concepts that you may be familiar with.
We have used the tools provided to us aggressively:
- we have filed policy grievances,
- we have brought a mandamus application in federal court,
- we have earned not just a seat on the UMCC for Phoenix Damages, but the lead vantage seat of co-chair of the committee, which is working on compensation for every federal government employee affected by Phoenix,
- we have worked with the media to raise awareness and create pressure, we have demonstrated in front of the Office of the Prime Minister and of course,
- we have been assisting individual members with the most serious Phoenix problems.
We will continue to use every available mechanism until every member's Phoenix-related issues relating to this crisis have been resolved.
To date, the community of bargaining agents, including the AJC, has convinced Treasury Board to establish a process that allows for the filing of a claim for certain expenses incurred because of the problems related to the Phoenix Pay system. A working group of bargaining agent heads and PSPC officials meet on a regular basis to get the latest updates, review priorities, and try to improve the process.
In turn, the AJC continues to provide email updates to its registered members regarding the Phoenix Pay system and continues to escalate priority cases to PSPC officials.
If for some reason, you are not receiving email updates, please contact us at admin@ajc-ajj.ca to update your personal contact information.
It is the AJC's understanding that incidents of AJC members not receiving regular pay are far fewer than those experienced by members of other bargaining agents.
However, there are still numerous issues affecting our members that include:
- New hires are reporting that they have yet to receive pay or be enrolled in requisite benefit plans.
- Members recently deployed on interdepartmental assignment or appointments are either not getting paid or are reporting getting paid by both departments.
- Members on leave without pay (LWOP) status are reporting that the processing of LWOP is very slow. Employees who have gone on long-term LWOP are continuing to be paid, and employees who submitted short-term LWOP forms are waiting for them to be processed.
- Members receiving acting pay also seem to be experiencing issues, such as receiving too much or too little acting pay. The tax implications of being overpaid are more serious than you might think.
- Some members in the LP1 and LP2 categories, who are not at the top of the pay scale have not received their in-range lock step increases.
- Some LP1 and LP2 at the top of scale, who are entitled to the performance pay, have yet to receive the lump-sum performance award payments or have experienced serious delays.
- Members are also experiencing delays in the processing of claims for reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses like law society fees and parking.
Overall Status
You can consult the latest statistics from the PSPC here: https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/remuneration-compensation/services-paye-pay-services/centre-presse-media-centre/mise-a-jour-update-eng.html
Priority 1: Employees not receiving pay
These employees include students, new hires and those returning from leave without pay.
Timeline
These employees' cases are supposed to be addressed within three working days upon notification of the issue.
Priority 2: Employees with pay at risk of disruption
These employees include those going on maternity leave or long-term disability and those leaving the public service.
Timeline
These employees' cases are supposed to be addressed within four to six weeks upon notification of the issue.
Priority 3: Employees not being paid properly
These employees are receiving regular pay, but missing supplementary pay.
For more up to date news, please click here.
- Examine your pay statement every payday to ensure it is correct.
- If there is a problem, flag it to your immediate supervisor/manager.
- Contact your Trusted Source and Liaison Unit to ensure that it received all the payroll information and instructions from your supervisor/manager and that such information has been inputted and submitted to the Pay Centre.
- If the information has been received and inputted by your Trusted Source and Liaison Unit, contact the Public Service Pay Center by emailing paycentre.centredepaye@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca
(Please note that for any pay-related issue, you must follow the process outlined below except as otherwise indicated)
You should start with an enquiry to the HR Trusted Source & Liaison Unit (HR TS&LU) to see if your documentation was sent to the Pay Centre to process the payment or change. Any item which requires management approval comes through the HR TS&LU. Everything that is a personal option must be sent by you to the Pay Centre, we cannot do this for you. The procedure in the HR TS&LU is to notify you with an e-mail that an item has been sent to the Pay Centre.
(If the HR TS&LU does not have confirmation, then you must get management to verify that the Pay Centre was notified of your issue).
It is left up to you to make enquiries through the Pay Centre on when the increase will be processed. The HR TS&LU is not mandated to make enquiries on your behalf when you can´t get through.
The HR TS&LU would only get involved if the Pay Centre's escalation process has been exhausted and there remains a dispute on salary or allowance issues. The HR TS&LU would then get involved and, where required, bring in other stakeholders such as Labour Relations.
With regard to the options for self-service in the Compensation Web Application (CWA), the HR TS&LU has no mandate to get involved, for example, with personal options by employees, such as paying additional tax or changing insurance coverage.
If you are being underpaid you can:
- Request Priority Pay: At the request of a manager and financial authority, departments can provide 60% of your gross pay within 24-48 hours. (These payments are deducted from your future pay.) For more information on Priority Pay, please click here.
- Request Emergency Salary Advance: Emergency salary advances may be available to members, please consult the answer to the next question for full details.
Requests for emergency salary advances where delays in payment are causing personal hardship can be made in accordance with TB's Directive on Terms and Conditions of Employment.
You can request an emergency salary advance (ESA) when you are not paid. You must ask the Public Service Pay Centre to send your department a requisition (Form GC 80) requesting an emergency salary advances payment of estimated net salary.
The GC 80 Form will go to the delegated manager for their signature (delegated manager must have a section 34 delegation under the Financial Administration Act and is a level 4 HR sub-delegation (usually DG level)). Once signed it is provided to Finance to issue the payment.
The GC 80 Form is then provided to the Trusted Source and Liaison Unit at the Public Service Pay Centre to record that the advance was issued and so they may recover the payment from the first available funds.
The applicable excerpts of the TB's Directive on Terms and Conditions of Employment are reproduced below:
16. Standard of timeliness
"16.1 Persons with the delegated authority are to adhere to the following pay timeliness standards:
a. On initial appointment, or on return to work following leave without pay or any other salary interruption, the salary payment covering the entitlement for the first pay period, should be available by the end of the following pay period and thereafter on the regular payday.
b. Upon termination of employment, the last salary payment should be available within 20 working days of the struck-off strength effective date.
c. All changes in pay should be reflected in the second pay period following the one in which the authorized document is received by Compensation.
17. Emergency salary advance
17.1 When a regular salary payment is not issued to a person as per subsection 16.1 paragraph a. above, persons with the delegated authority are to ensure that an emergency salary advance is requisitioned by the employing organization immediately. An emergency salary advance is to be issued only for time worked in a pay period and not paid through the normal processing of that pay.
17.2 A person does not have to request an emergency salary advance. If the person indicates that he or she does not want the advance when it is offered, the department is not required to issue one.
17.3 Emergency salary advances are not to be issued under the following circumstances:
a. for allowances or retroactive or extra-duty entitlements;
b.to replace missing or delayed direct deposit payments-these are to be handled in accordance with section 7 of the Electronic Payments Regulations; or
c.to replace lost, stolen or destroyed cheques after they have been delivered to the person-these are to be handled in accordance with section 5 of the Cheque Issue Regulations, 1997.
17.4 The amount of the emergency salary advance is to be calculated to the approximate net pay entitlement for the pay period covered and in no case is to exceed two thirds of the person's gross pay entitlement for the period.
17.5 Emergency salary advances are to be recovered from the first salary payments following the issuance of the emergency salary advance. When the emergency salary advance could not be recovered from the first salary payments, the person in receipt of the advance is required to refund the advance by means of a money order or personal cheque. Under no circumstances can the emergency salary advances be recovered over an extended period.
17.6 Emergency salary advances constitute accountable advances within the meaning of the Financial Administration Act and, when necessary, may be recovered from any monies payable to the person concerned or that person's estate."
You must first contact Service Canada's Employment Insurance Program Section to explain the situation in detail. Service Canada should be in a position to provide instructions on advancing your maternity/paternity claim forward.
Generally, the common rule is to ask questions and explain the predicament to Service Canada beforehand, concerning any difficulties you may be experiencing with the employer. If Service Canada knows a problems exist in advance, it usually will not apply any penalties. A maternity/paternity claim must be filed within 4 weeks from your last day worked.
In addition to requesting priority pay and an emergency salary advance, here are a few new things you can do once you have exhausted the process :
If you are not receiving pay at all or have been seriously shorted funds, contact the AJC at admin@ajc-ajj.com and provide your PRI number. In the case of employees not receiving pay, the pay center has a system in place to enable corrections to be made quickly. For significant shortfalls, such as payments of thousands of dollars of law society fees, the AJC will ask to have these considered as a priority. Currently, priority is being given, public-service wide, to those who are not receiving any salary payments.
Also, expense claims must be sent by your manager to the Trusted Source for approval. The Trusted Source is then responsible for forwarding the proper paperwork to the pay centre to be processed. If you have not received confirmation of this from the Trusted Source, you have to contact them first.
Recent pay processes and system issues have impacted group insurance benefit plan administration. These issues are affecting the ability of new employees to access their benefits and existing employees to change their levels of coverage.
In collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Plan administrators, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has developed temporary measures to address some of the issues with your benefits.
Public Service Health Care Plan (PSHCP)
Plan registration for new employees
If you are a new employee of the public service, you may not be aware that the PSHCP is a voluntary plan and requires an application within 60 days of being employed to have coverage start the first of the following month, otherwise, a three month waiting period applies. For example, if you started as a new employee of the public service on February 1, 2016, and immediately completed an application form, your coverage would have been effective March 1, 2016.
If you have not yet applied for coverage, please note that the waiting periods associated with late submission of an application have been temporarily waived.
This means that if you are eligible for PHSCP you are to:
- Complete and submit an electronic application form using the Public Service Health Care Plan online application through the Phoenix self-service tool.
- If unsuccessful, email a completed and scanned copy of the paper Employee application form to TPSGC.RSSFP-PSHCP.PWGSC@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca
- Complete Positive Enrolment with Sun Life once your application is approved and you are in receipt of your certificate number.
Changes in PSHCP coverage for current members
If you are currently a member of the PSHCP and want to make changes to your coverage levels (single/family or hospital levels), the waiting period associated with late submission of an application has been temporarily waived.
To make changes to your coverage levels, you are to:
- Use the Public Service Health Care Plan online application through the Phoenix self-service tool.
- If unsuccessful, email a completed and scanned copy of the paper Employee application form to TPSGC.RSSFP-PSHCP.PWGSC@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca
Retroactivity
All changes to PSHCP coverage will start the first of the month following the Pay Centre's receipt of a request, unless a retroactive date is requested. Requests for retroactive coverage must be made in writing to the Pay Centre, but will only be effective the first of the month following the date you were originally eligible for the coverage change. For example, a member who married on March 28, 2016, but who had a waiting period applied to change coverage from single to family can request a retroactive coverage effective date of April 1, 2016. A retroactive request must be for the first of the month following the date you became eligible for the change and cannot be for a date earlier than September 1, 2015. You may wish to choose this option if you incurred a claim that is not eligible because your coverage was not established on time.
If you have gone on Leave without Pay (LWOP) and did not elect to make a change in coverage prior to your departure but would like to now, you may do so without returning to work. You can make the change by contacting the Pay Centre and supplying them with the necessary Employee application form. Any required contributions that result from the change in coverage will be collected or refunded upon your return to work.
NOTE: Changes in coverage are regularly transmitted to Sun Life. If you are requesting retroactive coverage, it may take a few weeks following the Pay Centre's processing of your application before the Sun Life systems are updated.
Public Service Dental Care Plan (PSDCP)
Plan registration for new employees
If you are a new employee of the public service and eligible for the dental care plan, you will automatically be placed into the Plan after a three month waiting period. If you are unsure of your coverage start date or require your certificate number, contact the Pay Centre.
Changes in PSDCP coverage for current members
If you are on Leave without Pay (LWOP) and are required to remit contributions in order to retain coverage but have lost coverage on or after September 1, 2015, because contributions were not remitted you may contact the Pay Centre and request reinstatement without returning to work. You will be required to remit all missed contributions in a lump sum as well as your normal quarterly installments along with your request.
Public Service Management Insurance Plan (PSMIP)
Plan registration for new employees
If you are a new LP since September 1, 2015, and are eligible for life insurance coverage under the PSMIP, you may wish to complete a PSMIP application form and send it to the Pay Centre. New employees who have not already applied and been denied life insurance coverage may request Basic and Dependant coverage without completing a Declaration of Health Form. For information on how to apply, please contact the Pay Centre.
For additional information please visit New to the Public Service.
The Treasury Board announced that a claims office was open to reimbursing out-of-pocket expenses public servants have incurred due to problems with the Phoenix pay system. Currently, Treasury Board is not willing to compensate employees for interest. It will however consider out-of-pocket expenses incurred on account of the Pay Centre crisis.
For example, if you needed to take out a loan with a bank or had an outstanding balance on a credit card, the interest paid could be reimbursed. Please visit the TBS Claims process webpage for more information.
The claims office is designed to reimburse people as quickly as possible and departments will have the authority to pay any claims under $500 without TB approval. Larger and more complex claims will go to the Treasury Board for decision.
- Please visit the TBS Claims process webpage.
- For frequently asked questions about the claims process, please click here.
- Click here for the Departmental Claims Officer.
As of April 27th 2017: Recognizing the unfair financial burdens these pay issues have placed on employees, the Government of Canada will reimburse those who seek or have already obtained tax advice to address tax implications caused by problems with the Phoenix system. Employees who encountered Phoenix pay issues may seek up to $200 in reimbursement for tax advisory services in relation to their 2016 or 2017 income taxes.
If you have consulted a tax expert, you are invited to submit a claim.
- Please consult the frequently asked questions on tax advisory services reimbursement page here.
- You will find the claims form for the TBS tax advisory services reimbursement here.
(Updated on July 31st 2017)