Federal public service unions want $75M Phoenix fund in federal budget
Money would go toward staff and training, say union leaders
Several unions representing federal public servants want a $75-million Phoenix contingency fund in the upcoming federal budget as they mark the one-year anniversary of the rollout of the problem-plagued pay system.
Representatives of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) and the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) held a news conference on Parliament Hill Tuesday afternoon.
Together, the three unions represent more than 240,000 employees in the federal public service.
Their leadership said the money should go toward more staff and training within government departments to help solve Phoenix-related problems.
"There's been a lot of money put into technological fixes, we need now to go beyond that … we need the departments and agencies to have the human resources and training to help resolve these issues internally," said PSAC's national executive vice-president Chris Aylward.
"Budgeting more money to address the system's ongoing problems is really the very least the government could do after a year with this problem-plagued system," said PIPSC president Debi Daviau.
Daviau added the sense she's getting from her members is the problems will likely last six more months.
"We don't quite see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, we don't see a detailed plan that leads us to believe this problem will be resolved," she said.
Later in the day Public Services and Procurement Minister Judy Foote told reporters they'll continue to put money into a Phoenix fix without mentioning a dollar amount.
"We're going to have to do an assessment of what our needs are, but we have continued to put in additional funding and as I've said before we will continue to look at the situation and take whatever measures we have to to fix the problem," she said.
The federal government has not said when it will table its budget.
Union actions to date
In early February PIPSC asked the Treasury Board for emergency money because the Phoenix pay system failed to properly transfer $1.7 million in union dues.
And in January PIPSC called on the federal government to set up a temporary parallel pay system until Phoenix is fixed, and to give more employees access to emergency salary advances.
About a dozen unions had late last year attempted to sue the federal government over Phoenix, but in December the unions agreed to put their lawsuit on hold in exchange for more "information sharing and communication" from the government moving forward.