The Canadian Press
OTTAWA–There’s been a fresh spike in problems with the federal government’s bug-addled public service pay system, the result of new labour contracts and summer hiring.
Marie Lemay, deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada, said her department did manage to stabilize the backlog of pay change files that were being dealt with in March and April.
But Lemay noted the backlog surged by about 10 percent last month when the Phoenix system was inundated with new pay requests.
The system was jammed by pay changes made to accommodate new collective agreements coming into force for roughly 24,000 government employees working as financial managers, auditors, scientists, and others.
In addition, about 5,000 summer students were hired.
Officials said around 345,000 pay change transactions were entered into the system in May, about 265,000 more than the 80,000 the system normally is expected to handle.
“All this means the number of transactions awaiting processing has grown,” Lemay told a teleconference today.
The government said last month it was hoping to enlist 200 temporary workers on top of the 300 hired to date to deal with the Phoenix issues, which initially left tens of thousands of public servants underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all.
Lemay said today she expected up to 230 new pay system employees could be hired over the next two years.
