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I brought a report home from work with me to read because I have a 10:00 meeting in which I was asked (with others) to provide feedback. I am not sure what I can contribute to this, because it's kind of outside of my field of knowledge, but I'll do my best anyway.
The talk with my Director went pretty well. The first half went really well, because it was a "Okay, you are my supervisor now, what kind of ground rules are we looking at?" kind of a talk, and he and I have very similar styles. The second half was the "I do not want to work for the manager when she returns from maternity leave" talk, so obviously that wasn't much fun for either of us.
He asked me very diffidently to reconsider making that a hard line, and I had to explain that I am a person who almost never draws hard lines, but in this case working with her would mean sacrificing my mental health and I refuse to do that. He agreed that my well-being was more important than trying to salvage a working relationship that has never once been good, and while he didn't make any promises, he did say that since the Powers That Be are looking to expand the scope of our unit, we could look into trying to find something else for me so that I wouldn't report directly to her.
That's pretty much what I expected to come of the meeting, so I am not disappointed. He gave me a glowing (unofficial) review of my work so far, so I'm on pretty solid ground, here.
I spent a good chunk of today continuing to try to sort out the pay issues of one of my employees. She came to us from elsewhere in the public service in September of 2019, and since then has not once been paid correctly. When she left PPS (her previous place of employment) she was in an acting supervisor role. She came to us, and PPS simply... didn't transfer over her file. Not only that, but they removed her acting supervisor status, so her pay dropped drastically, to way below the salary we were meant to be paying her. Because her file remained with PPS, we couldn't do anything about it: her vacation time, her lieu time, and all of her sick days also remained untransferred.
We FINALLY got that fixed last summer (ten months later!!!), at which point when the RCMP started paying her, we discovered she was being paid at the lowest possible "step" for her position. Her letter of offer, signed by the Assistant Commissioner, clearly stated she was to be hired at "step four" of the salary scale, and when she was made permanent, she should have immediately moved up to "step three" of her new salary scale. Instead they were paying her at "step one" of the initial scale, with no change.
She also was not getting paid any of her extra duty pay (overtime, shift premiums, etc.). We discovered that whenever we were submitting her pay claims, our Pay Authentication Centre would send it to the Phoenix Pay Centre, who would note that she wasn't listed as an RCMP employee (because PPS was still hanging onto her file, you will recall), and simply deleted the claims without further processing. *headdesk*
When I stepped into the role of interim manager on October 30th, nothing was solved, so I made it my mission in life to get this fixed. I talked with everyone under the sun, and the first thing I was told was that her letter of offer, signed by the A/Comm, was invalid because, get this, there wasn't a one day interruption between her last day of employment with PPS and her first day with the RCMP, so "transfer rules" applied, meaning they were forced to pay her at the lowest rate. *insert eyerolling here* I told them that it was very clearly bullshit, and pulled out the big guns, in the form of my Director.
My Director, as you will have noticed, is absolutely lovely and cares about his employees' well-being. He agreed with me that this was all bullshit, and he got on the phone with our DG, who got on the phone with the DG at National Compensation Services, and then we were off to the races. The letter of offer was approved (shocker), and we were told to re-submit ALL the paperwork and they would take care of it.
Well, some of that was true. Here we are mid-January (sixteen months after she was hired), and the poor employee still hasn't seen a red fucking cent. Not only that, but because her file was with PPS in 2020, her union dues weren't being taken off her pay, so now SURPRISE! they are charging her double the union dues to make up for last year, so she's making even less money. In a twist which I wish were surprising, her PPS union dues have not been reimbursed. The Phoenix Pay Centre informed her that they would not be reimbursed until her "promotion was all settled." Which, WHAT? That is bonkers. There is no good reason for the fact that she received a promotion to somehow impede the reimbursement of a fixed fee. I just found that part out today, so I'll be looking into that tomorrow.
Anyway, I feel terrible for this poor woman. She is an incredibly hard worker, and it feels like she's being punished by the bureaucracy gods for no good reason. The salary she's getting now isn't enough to cover all of her bills, she's had to get loans and it's fucked up her credit score, and all this because a bunch of government bureaucrats couldn't (and seemingly can't) get their shit together. This shouldn't be hard, and yet here we are.
I really hope that I can give her some good news soon. At least I know all of the paperwork is now in order. I just need a human being in the right position of authority to give me concrete proof that all of the documentation has been correctly input into the system and that all of the back pay that is owed will be paid out ASAP.
The rest of my day was all meetings and emails and trying to fix all of the problems generated by the fact that our entire organization of tens of thousands of people is moving to Outlook. The whole Outlook thing is a bit of a garbage fire, and the less said about it, the better. ;)
The talk with my Director went pretty well. The first half went really well, because it was a "Okay, you are my supervisor now, what kind of ground rules are we looking at?" kind of a talk, and he and I have very similar styles. The second half was the "I do not want to work for the manager when she returns from maternity leave" talk, so obviously that wasn't much fun for either of us.
He asked me very diffidently to reconsider making that a hard line, and I had to explain that I am a person who almost never draws hard lines, but in this case working with her would mean sacrificing my mental health and I refuse to do that. He agreed that my well-being was more important than trying to salvage a working relationship that has never once been good, and while he didn't make any promises, he did say that since the Powers That Be are looking to expand the scope of our unit, we could look into trying to find something else for me so that I wouldn't report directly to her.
That's pretty much what I expected to come of the meeting, so I am not disappointed. He gave me a glowing (unofficial) review of my work so far, so I'm on pretty solid ground, here.
I spent a good chunk of today continuing to try to sort out the pay issues of one of my employees. She came to us from elsewhere in the public service in September of 2019, and since then has not once been paid correctly. When she left PPS (her previous place of employment) she was in an acting supervisor role. She came to us, and PPS simply... didn't transfer over her file. Not only that, but they removed her acting supervisor status, so her pay dropped drastically, to way below the salary we were meant to be paying her. Because her file remained with PPS, we couldn't do anything about it: her vacation time, her lieu time, and all of her sick days also remained untransferred.
We FINALLY got that fixed last summer (ten months later!!!), at which point when the RCMP started paying her, we discovered she was being paid at the lowest possible "step" for her position. Her letter of offer, signed by the Assistant Commissioner, clearly stated she was to be hired at "step four" of the salary scale, and when she was made permanent, she should have immediately moved up to "step three" of her new salary scale. Instead they were paying her at "step one" of the initial scale, with no change.
She also was not getting paid any of her extra duty pay (overtime, shift premiums, etc.). We discovered that whenever we were submitting her pay claims, our Pay Authentication Centre would send it to the Phoenix Pay Centre, who would note that she wasn't listed as an RCMP employee (because PPS was still hanging onto her file, you will recall), and simply deleted the claims without further processing. *headdesk*
When I stepped into the role of interim manager on October 30th, nothing was solved, so I made it my mission in life to get this fixed. I talked with everyone under the sun, and the first thing I was told was that her letter of offer, signed by the A/Comm, was invalid because, get this, there wasn't a one day interruption between her last day of employment with PPS and her first day with the RCMP, so "transfer rules" applied, meaning they were forced to pay her at the lowest rate. *insert eyerolling here* I told them that it was very clearly bullshit, and pulled out the big guns, in the form of my Director.
My Director, as you will have noticed, is absolutely lovely and cares about his employees' well-being. He agreed with me that this was all bullshit, and he got on the phone with our DG, who got on the phone with the DG at National Compensation Services, and then we were off to the races. The letter of offer was approved (shocker), and we were told to re-submit ALL the paperwork and they would take care of it.
Well, some of that was true. Here we are mid-January (sixteen months after she was hired), and the poor employee still hasn't seen a red fucking cent. Not only that, but because her file was with PPS in 2020, her union dues weren't being taken off her pay, so now SURPRISE! they are charging her double the union dues to make up for last year, so she's making even less money. In a twist which I wish were surprising, her PPS union dues have not been reimbursed. The Phoenix Pay Centre informed her that they would not be reimbursed until her "promotion was all settled." Which, WHAT? That is bonkers. There is no good reason for the fact that she received a promotion to somehow impede the reimbursement of a fixed fee. I just found that part out today, so I'll be looking into that tomorrow.
Anyway, I feel terrible for this poor woman. She is an incredibly hard worker, and it feels like she's being punished by the bureaucracy gods for no good reason. The salary she's getting now isn't enough to cover all of her bills, she's had to get loans and it's fucked up her credit score, and all this because a bunch of government bureaucrats couldn't (and seemingly can't) get their shit together. This shouldn't be hard, and yet here we are.
I really hope that I can give her some good news soon. At least I know all of the paperwork is now in order. I just need a human being in the right position of authority to give me concrete proof that all of the documentation has been correctly input into the system and that all of the back pay that is owed will be paid out ASAP.
The rest of my day was all meetings and emails and trying to fix all of the problems generated by the fact that our entire organization of tens of thousands of people is moving to Outlook. The whole Outlook thing is a bit of a garbage fire, and the less said about it, the better. ;)
