Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) said federal managers paid 120,000 striking employees millions in regular wages during a dispute in 2023, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.“In total, approximately $309 million in overpayments was created between April and November 2023,” said PSPC in a submission to the House of Commons Government Operations Committee. This period coincided with a 12-day strike by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). PSPC admitted about $150 million in overpayments “was created for ‘leave without pay’ transactions for reasons of strike activities as departments were not able to enter ‘leave without pay’ in the system for more than 100,000 employees in time to stop their pay.”“These transactions were automatically processed by the pay system,” it said. “Most of the strike related ‘leave without pay’ overpayments were recovered through first available funds.” PSAC workers and the Canada Revenue Agency reached a tentative agreement that put an end to a strike involving 35,000 workers in May. READ MORE: PSAC reaches tentative deal with Canada Revenue Agency, ending strike of 35,000 workersThe tentative agreement followed separate deals between the Canadian government and PSAC, ending a strike involving more than 120,000 public employees in four other government departments. It said the agreement consisted of a wage increase of 12.6% compounded throughout the contract period from 2021 to 2024. A fourth year is included in the agreement to safeguard workers against inflation.Former treasury board president Mona Fortier put the cost of the settlement at $5.2 billion. “We have worked very hard,” said Fortier. The strike was the longest by PSAC since one in 1991 that lasted 13 days and ended with back-to-work legislation. It said it was bargaining for “iron clad job security.” PSPC said pay errors were ordinary and easy to explain. “Overpayments are generally caused by late data entry on the part of actioning departments, late manual processing on the part of pay processors either at the pay centre or in departments, or human error,” it said. “Transactions that lead to overpayments will either result in a recovery on first available funds or will remain as an outstanding overpayment on the account until the overpayment has been recovered.”
