Miramichi pay centre at heart of Phoenix problems

Public service employees are three times more likely to see delays receiving their payif it is processed through the pay centre inMiramichi than at federal offices or institutions elsewhere in the country.

The Miramichicentre faces a higher rate of delayed processing, according to documents obtained by Radio-Canada.

• Miramichi mayor wants apology for payroll centre comments

The revelationcomes in the wake of a union leader's suggestion that the pay centre should not have been put inMiramichiin the first place.

Last week, during an interview with the CBC'sHarry Forestell, GregMcGillis, executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said itwas a mistake to move thecentre to the small New Brunswick city.

The statementprovoked ademand for an apology from MiramichiMayorAdamLordon an apology he received in a phone call Monday.

"This afternoon the president of the national PSACunion called me personally to apologize to say that Mr. McGillis's comments do not reflect the views of the union, that they have supported and will continue to support the centre in Miramichiand all the hardworking Miramichiers who work there," Lordon told CBC.

The mayor said he heard reaction to the commentfrom many city residents and people who worked at the centre.

Three times more delays

But as of Aug. 8, according to numbersfrom Treasury Board, 64 per cent of employees whose pay goes through the Miramichicentre were dealing with delays of more than a month.

This doesn't meet the government's recently established standards.

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In contrast, in places where pay is processed internally, only 21 per cent ofemployees are seeing the same delays.

The Miramichicentre deals with the pay of two-thirds of public servants, or about 210,000 people.

It processes paycheques for 46 federal departments or agencies, including Parks Canada, Veterans Affairs and Correctional Services Canada.

The other federal public service employees, about 100,000, have their salary processed internally.

Regardless of where the paycheques are processed, the Phoenix pay system is used.

More employees needed

The decision to centralizepublic function pay processing in Miramichi was taken in 2010 by the Harper government, which then cut 700 pay workers.

The current federal government said it has hired some pay specialists since the cuts, but it is still looking to hire more.

"Efforts are ongoing," Steven MacKinnon, parliamentary secretaryto the minister of public services and procurement, said in an interview with Radio-Canada.

"We inherited a system we now have to fix," he said.

A year and a half after the Phoenix system went live, in February 2016, about 156,000 federal public servants, or about half, were still affected by the failures of the system

Hard to understand

Area politicians have a hard time understanding why the finger is being pointed at the Miramichicentre.

"I can't actually see why why it would be different if you have a centre in Miramichi, or if it's located in Gatineau or anywhere else," said PatFinnigan, the MP for MiramichiGrand Lake.

"I speak to the workers very often. We visited the centre four times with the minister, and they are hard-working people, they are smart people and they as much as anybody else want to fix the issues that Phoenix is having."

Lordon, the mayor,said the numbers are cause for concern,but he doesn't think they tell the whole story.

"You could have the most qualified people in the world, the most intelligent people in the world, if they haven't been trained properly, then perhaps they're not going to have the level of success that we'd all hope for," hesaid.

Since the Phoenix system was launched in February 2016, tens of thousands of public servants have been underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all.

Lordon said he hopes to see the federal government committed to finding a solution.

He said the continuing problems at the pay centre involve the software.

"They are not people issues."