Winnipeg health authority hopes to claw back $1.2M it overpaid health-care workers

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority wants to suck back more than $1.2 million it accidentally doled out to hundreds of employees over the past four years — but they're encountering pushback from unions.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals and the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union filed grievances against the health authority after hundreds of union members received letters asking them to reimburse money they were paid by mistake.

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The Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union blames the issue on a new centralized payment system the health authority began moving to in 2012 and officially rolled out in 2015.

But the system, which now is used for nearly all 28,000 health authority staff, isn't part of the overpayment problem, the health authority said. 

"It's more [automated and] robust. It's improving the way that we are able to identify overpayments and fulfil our responsibility to the public to be responsible with our money," a health authority spokesperson said.

"Overpayments are something that happen in all large organizations to some degree on an ongoing basis, and the WRHA is no exception to that rule."

Unions raised red flags

Just over 1,200 health-care employees were overpaid between 2012 and 2016, the majority of whom received less than $1,000 over their regular base salary. No pattern to the overpayment mix-ups has been identified, and health-care workers across departments were affected.

Both unions say they raised red flags several times about the new system's ability to serve such a large worker base, but those concerns were ignored. 

MGEU believes that overpayments determined to be legitimate should be returned to the employer in a reasonable time frame in accordance to rules already in place in the current agreement.- MGEU spokesperson

"Since this program came online, there have been many instances of payment errors which have, in our view, demonstrated the program's inability to meet the demands of the WRHA," the union spokesperson said in a statement, adding the MGEU has filed a policy grievance and the organization's legal counsel has met with health authority officials.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals represents 3,900 health-care workers, more than a third of whom work for the WRHA. The association filed two grievances of its own after it received 300 overpayment letters as of October 2016. A spokesperson said the union has received about five to 10 such letters each day since Jan. 1.

In a newsletter to members in December, the health care union says the letters violate an aspect of the collective bargaining agreement that limits the employer from recovering any overpayment more than a year after the error was discovered.

'Alleged overpayment'

"If we are aware of your overpayment and it falls outside of the parameters negotiated in the collective agreement, you will be receiving notice from us that your alleged overpayment will be included in grievances filed with the [WRHA]," MAHCP president Bob Moroz said in a newsletter to union members in December 2016.

The health authority believes the majority of the errors stemmed from clerical errors such as late paperwork, data entry slip-ups when filling out time sheets or accidentally paying staff twice for the same work period.

"Although it doesn't happen often, the most common reason for any larger overpayments is a result of duplicate payments from both WRHA and [employment insurance], [workers' compensation], or [Manitoba Public Insurance] with neither these organizations, or WRHA, knowing about payments from the other," the WRHA spokesperson said.

The letters to employees started flowing in April 2015, a few months after the health authority hired a small investigative unit to crunch numbers and identify who was overpaid and how much.

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The health authority is still sending letters about overpayment to staff and hopes to resolve the issue directly with employees or through unions, but hasn't ruled out possible legal action in order to get the money back.

"Legal action is always a consideration, but our preference would be to absolutely deal with the individuals directly and unions if applicable," the health authority spokesperson said, adding the organization is flexible in terms of repayment options.

Health-care workers who have received a letter and wish to pay the amount can either contact the WRHA's human resources office or fill out the form that comes attached to the repayment request.

The Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union recommends its 4,100 health authority workers reimburse the WRHA "in a reasonable time frame" if the overpayments are deemed legitimate.