Supporting Education at Algonquin Lakeshore Catholic District School Board
Please take the time to answer a few questions regarding how you would like to see the new education and apprenticeship funding that we will receive due to the extension. We appreciate you taking the time to fill out the survey. The more people to respond the better, this will give us a clear picture as to what our members feel would be most beneficial.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact a member of the executive.
Kevin French-President, Jennifer Connor-VP West, Andrew Eves-VP East and Liz James-Chief Steward will be meeting with the board to discuss best ways to allocate staffing funding to reach the most student need’s. We would like your opinion on how you best feel additional staff could benefit your job classification. Schools across the province were given additional funding for full-time CUPE positions that directly impact special education or prom
ote healthy and safe school environments. It is our perspective that all of our members promote healthy and safe schools but the government was specific in naming positions that the money had to go to.
The following job classifications are specified in the contract extension agreement to have additional staff allocation funding are: EA, YW, other special staffing related to special education, LRA, clerical, secretary, IT, custodian and maintenance. Please know that there isn’t a huge amount of money available. Everyone will have ideas as to how the money will be spent and we will do our best to bring as many ideas to the table, but not all ideas will be implemented. We will take the most popular ones forward.
Please have your response in by April 7th. One survey per member in the above groups.
If you have any questions please contact the Executive.
Let’s show solidarity to fellow union members who are not getting paid properly.
We plan this to occur every two week forward till Phoenix is fixed!
Too many Federal workers have gone for too long without being paid, with being underpaid, etc.
Rally will take place on Friday March 24th at 4:00 pm at MP Mark Gerretsen’s office at 841 Princess Street.
The following will be onsite:
Chris Snooks PSAC Area Council President 613-305-2297
Bill Bailey Regional Vice-President Ontario CSC 613-483-0236
Rej Bruneau UNDE President Local 641 613-305-2290
Catherine St-Georges UNDE Local 641 Public Relations 613-539-0552
Information on the Phoenix Pay System:
8,000 federal workers still stuck in Phoenix pay system backlog
By Monique Scotti National Online Journalist, Politics Global News
Deputy Minister of Public Works and Government Services Marie Lemay is pictured during a technical briefing on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
The federal government is still working to clear a backlog of pay files linked to the beleaguered Phoenix pay program, with officials providing no estimate for when the system will return to a “steady state.”
The latest update from Ottawa came on Wednesday, with the deputy minister of public services and procurement answering questions about the progress made over the last two months.
Government misses deadline on Phoenix pay system backlog
Marie Lemay, who has held a technical briefing every few weeks since the program’s meltdown last summer, assured reporters that work to fix Phoenix has continued over the winter. She acknowledged that there is still a backlog of around 8,000 files that need to be handled.
“We continue to work toward the elimination of our backlog,” Lemay said, noting that the majority of the remaining cases involve transfers and “acting assignments” in the public service.
READ MORE: How did this all start, and how did the Phoenix problems get so bad?
Of the 8,000 employees left in the backlog queue, she said, 5,000 have had at least some transactions closed and are waiting on others. The federal government has a total of around 300,000 people on its payroll.
“We are working hard (to clear) the remaining transactions as quickly as we can, but we’re dealing with very old files,” the deputy minister said.
WATCH: Phoenix pay system execs to get bonuses before workers receive money
In some cases, compensation advisers working for the department must research an employee’s pay history then manually input that information into Phoenix. It can take a full day to complete just one of those files, Lemay explained.
“This is a challenge that we’re facing with the cases in the backlog,” she said.
The backlog has diminished by about 2,000 files in the last month. According to Lemay, the government has continued to prioritize transactions that are critical for the end the fiscal year.
People who were overpaid, for instance, need to have their accounts sorted before they are taxed for the additional money they were handed.
By February, the department hopes to post information for employees that will set out service standards so they will have an idea of normal processing times.
At the moment, Ottawa isn’t meeting its 20-day service standard for new pay changes and requests, which are instead taking around 10 weeks to process.
The Phoenix pay system was rolled out in February 2016, but a steep learning curve and deep backlog of existing files led to a meltdown that affected tens of thousands of federal public servants.
The government has estimated it will cost $50 million to get things back to normal. Lemay said Wednesday that it’s likely that tally will increase.
As the crisis comes to an end, she added, her department is “more than ready” to investigate what went wrong with Phoenix. Lemay said she expects to find multiple “points of failure.”
© 2017 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
