Last year, I remember reading the horror stories published regularly on the news about government workers not being paid because of the new Phoenix system. Students having to live off rice and Mr. Noodles, delay tuition payments, and take up second jobs because they weren’t being paid. New mothers not receiving maternity pay, borrowing money and scrounging to make ends meet. I remember one of my friends, a fellow government worker, telling me he was considering going bankrupt to eliminate debt that he now had because he hadn’t been paid by Phoenix.
These are just some examples of the 80,000 employees last year that were negatively affected by Phoenix. I read and listened and sympathized to these stories, and remember thinking: how can something seemingly so powerful as a federal government let this happen? And more importantly, why weren’t they doing more to fix it?
Phoenix is an automated payroll system for federal public servants first announced by Stephen Harper back in 2009, and implemented in February of last year. It was supposed to be wonderful—cost-effective, modern, streamlined, paperless. But there was one huge issue: it didn’t work properly. And now, over a year later, it still hasn’t been fixed.
I have been working for the federal government in a student position for over two years now, and in the past, haven’t had a problem receiving my pay on time. When Phoenix was implemented last year, I was one of the lucky ones that continued getting paid on time. But a lot of people weren’t. I heard stories of students who worked four month contracts in the summer with the government, and didn’t get paid until September. Other people were being overpaid, by huge amounts. Disability leave, maternity leave, acting pay, sick leave, vacation pay—these were all backlogged cases that frequently took months to resolve.
I thought I was safe from the Phoenix mess, but it turns out I was wrong. I started a new work contract this January, working 22 hours a week. To this day, (mid-March), I still have not gotten paid. My last paycheque was in December. Because of this, I have had to borrow money from my parents to be able to pay rent and groceries, and I try to refrain from excessive spending as much as I can. It’s insanely stressful to try to plan my life when I have no idea when I’ll be able to afford it. I’ve been trying to go to Toronto to see some friends since January, but have been postponing the trip until I get paid. I’ve had to pass up several social outings and shopping opportunities because I can’t afford them. I know other people have it way worse than me, but I’m sure most students can imagine the inconvenience of not receiving any income for over three months.
The most frustrating thing is the feeling of helplessness when you know despite submitting all the proper paperwork, the matter is out of your hands and there’s nothing you can do to fix it. Government workers spend hours on the phone with Phoenix trying to fix their problems. I’ve personally written several emails to Phoenix and human resources to get my file going, but due to the large volume of backlogged cases and new cases emerging, there’s not enough staff and knowledge to get it done. I’ve also heard it’s expected to cost the government more than $50 million to fix Phoenix.
It’s common knowledge among civil servants that the federal government is infamously outdated when it comes to technology. But having to use Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word 2010 are extremely minor inconveniences compared to the Phoenix mess. I don’t know who’s to blame for Phoenix, or who’s in charge of fixing it and I don’t know why the system failed as much as it did and what should be done to fix it. All I know is that employees should be entitled to be paid for the work they do, and not have to wait months and months, living off scraps and debt and borrowed money, before this happens.
– Photo illustration by Angela Tilley
