PSAC has negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding with Treasury Board to address recruitment and retention of compensation advisors. The aim is to ensure the government has enough staff resources to deal with the many problems related to the Phoenix pay system.
Recruitment and retention incentives
To address the staff shortage, we have negotiated measures to improve recruitment and retention of compensation advisors who work under Treasury Board. The measures include:
- Compensation advisor retention allowances for current staff, new recruits, and former retirees who return to work
- Improvements to overtime, carry-over or cash-out of vacation leave, and compensatory leave
- An independent job content and classification process for all PSPC compensation Advisor employees at the AS 1, 2 & 3 levels
Shortage of compensation staff
When the former Conservative government consolidated the federal public service pay system, hundreds of compensation advisors were laid off. The expertise and experience of those workers was lost. When Phoenix went live in 2016, there were not enough staff to deal with the problems it caused.
Although the government has tried to bring back former compensation staff, the pay centre in Miramichi and the satellite pay offices remain understaffed.
“We hope that these measures will bring in more compensation staff so that Phoenix-related problems are addressed more efficiently. All federal public service workers deserve to be paid on time and correctly,” said Robyn Benson, PSAC National President.
Additional information:
- Q&A on Compensation Advisor Memorandum of Understanding [PSAC website]
- Memorandum of Understanding regarding incentives [PDF]
A version of this article was also published on the PSAC website.
