PSAC has filed policy grievances against Treasury Board, Parks Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for their heavy-handed mismanagement of the Phoenix overpayment process.

In fall 2021, the Public Service Pay Centre launched the recovery process for Phoenix overpayments for thousands of federal public service workers the government believes were overpaid by the Phoenix pay system in 2016. Because of the six-year limitation period to begin recovering these overpayments, they rushed the process, producing major errors and giving many PSAC members misleading information.

We recognize that some members owe these overpayment debts. However, many others received overpayments based on inaccurate, outdated and unverifiable information. Some were not even aware that they had been overpaid until they received these letters years later.

PSAC believes their overpayment recovery strategy violates our members’ collective agreements. Our grievances challenge the employers to:

• comply with members’ collective agreements;
• provide sufficient information to members about their overpayment before collecting it;
• reconcile a member’s entire pay file before sending an overpayment letter;
• reimburse any amounts that may have been improperly recovered from members.

While the grievances are processed, PSAC will continue to help members affected by this complex process. If you received a Phoenix overpayment letter, please refer to the PSAC’s specific recommendations on how to proceed.