Currently
USJE has been, and continues reminding Correctional Service Canada (CSC) of their responsibility to ensure that employees are paid accurately and on time. USJE expects CSC to provide some form of payment to employees immediately as a show of good faith.
Correctional Services Special Duty Allowance(CSSDA) and the previous Penological Factor Allowance (PFA) continue to be one of the larger issues since the switch to the Phoenix Pay System. The Pay Centre can only process what is provided to them. CSC reports continuous problems finding a fix to have the CSSDA entered properly and therefore the Pay Centre is not able to process the allowance for many employees.
The latest update that USJE has received is that CSC does not believe that they will have the CSSDA issues cleared up before the end of this year, 2020.
No amount of Pay Action Requests (PAR) will result in fixing this issue.USJE has confirmed this with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and CSC. Unfortunately, this message has not been properly communicated by CSC to employees nor to the PSPC Client Service Centre which results in misinformation to employees. Please do not file any more PARs for CSSDA pay issues. USJE recommends that you communicate your CSSDA issues to usjephoenix_phenixsesj@psac-afpc.com with your Personal Record Identifier (PRI) and a USJE Phoenix Authorization Form.
USJE gave CSC plenty of time to provide an update to employees, which was also to go to PSPC. USJE gave CSC a deadline to publish an update which they failed to meet.
Historically
USJE has been asking for a list of affected USJE members since the appointment of a full-time LRO to the Phoenix Pay portfolio, in February 2019, and still have not received a list. Late fall we were told that approximately 2000 employees are impacted by some kind of CSSDA issue but that they hoped to have a fix for approximately 1500 before the end of 2019.
Late December 2019, CSC was successful in getting some employees set up to receive their CSSDA going forward but still did not have a fix for the retro. CSC had set up a separate team and projected a fix by February of 2020.
February came and went and instead of finding a fix they discovered the CSSDA was not only not fixed but randomly dropping once it had been started.
Acting situations continue to be a negative trigger to CSSDA dropping or never having been started in December of 2019.
What is USJE Doing about CSSDA?
In December of 2019 USJE proposed a strategy for employees missing their CSSDA to request priority payments and file grievances. Unfortunately, and rightfully so, many employees do not trust priority payments. Add the fact that CSC is either denying requests for priority payments or simply not adhering to the message to Deputy Heads that was sent by Treasury Board to use priority payments.
Therefore, USJE has had to take the drastic step of asking the PSAC National President to engage Treasury Board. USJE asked to have these issues addressed at the Treasury Board level not only because the CSSDA has still not been administered properly, but because CSC is also not making proper use of priority payments.
As mentioned above, USJE expects CSC to provide some form of payment to employees immediately as a show of good faith.