PSAC's Chris Aylward listens to Debi Daviau, president of PIPSC, during a news conference about the Phoenix pay system in October 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The head of the union calling on the federal government to replace the disastrous Phoenix pay system says she’s willing to consider opening up collective agreements to streamline the thousands of pay rules that bedevilled the system from the start.

Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), said Treasury Board — not the unions — is largely responsible for the labyrinth of rules on extra pay. But she said she is willing to consider sitting down with government to pare them back — as long as public servants don’t face a pay cut.

“For sure, we would consider looking at special allowances and other types of monetary pay and rolling them into our base pay to make it a little more simple,” she said.

How the union would deal with the complexity of the federal pay rules was one of many questions Daviau faced this week when she called for the government to replace the troubled Phoenix with a new pay system built by public servants, not the private sector.

Some say Daviau’s apparent willingness to negotiate could open the door for the first major review of federal pay rules in 60 years — a step technology experts have argued is critical to fixing Phoenix or building a replacement.

“If ever there was a time to revisit the pay rules, it’s now,” said Ron Cochrane, a union executive widely considered the dean of the federal labour movement.

“It’s time the unions and government take their heads out of the sand and take a fresh look at this. We have been trying to fix Phoenix for two years and it isn’t working.”

No one disputes that the complexity of federal pay is the root cause of the calamities that have dogged Phoenix from the start. Experts argue the number of rules should have be reduced and simplified before the government even started work on Phoenix. Those rules would still be the biggest challenge to Daviau’s proposal to build a new system.

The government has spent more than $400 million on fixes for Phoenix but no one has suggested a special round of negotiations with unions to simplify the rules that accumulated over 60 years of collective bargaining, said Cochrane, a former co-chair of the joint union-management National Joint Council.

Cochrane argues such a review is long overdue and he’s “shocked” that it wasn’t done before Phoenix was built. He chalks that up to the previous Conservative government’s obsession with “back office” savings and cutting staff when it approved the $300 million-plus pay overhaul.

“I think we could cooperate and get things done here,” he said. “If we approach this as partners, this is the ideal time to sit down and fix the rules. They have taken so many baby steps to fix Phoenix but this is the problem.”

It’s not clear why such a review wasn’t done. Some say negotiating new rules would require multiple rounds of bargaining and take years to complete. Others predicted unions would dig in their heels against any concessions that their members might see as rollbacks.

But Cochrane, also a long-time negotiator, said changes could be done in a special round of negotiations and, with cooperation, could be finished in a matter of months.

“My point is this can be done and if there is a will there is a way,” said Cochrane. “It’s not insurmountable.”

Labour relations in the federal government have been rocky for years — and downright hostile during the Tory era. But Cochrane said the parties have never worked more collaboratively as “partners” as they have on fixing Phoenix. A special union-management committee was created more than a year ago to deal with Phoenix issues and discuss potential solutions.

Cochrane said the committee has improved labour relations and its initiatives — from setting up a claims process to deciding how much interest to pay on money owed to public servants — are “important … but let’s move beyond these stop-gap measures to the more substantive issues.”

The federal workforce includes 22 different employers within the core public service and the various separate agencies and Crown corporations. Employees are covered by 80 collective agreements with more than 80,000 business rules on pay enshrined in those contracts over the years.

The government and unions have negotiated rules for pay and benefits over the years that are specific to more than 80 occupational groups in the public service. Those rules cover things like overtime, acting positions, leave and promotions. Layered on top of that are rules within rules — with arcane language that often has conflicting interpretations.

No other employer in Canada has a pay system as complicated — which is what made it so difficult to customize and automate an off-the-shelf payroll system.

Phoenix has been beset with many other blunders, but most of them — poor training and the decision to lay off 700 experienced compensation advisers — flowed from the government’s failure to plan and implement a project built on such a complex web of rules.

Cochrane argues the easiest way to streamline is to pick the most “beneficial” provision and make it the standard for everyone. Take, for example, the nearly 40 different rules for overtime; he suggests picking the most generous of the overtime rules and applying it everyone.

That also would make it easier for unions to sell changes to their members.

“We don’t have to give up anything. We could move to the highest common denominator and pick the rules that best suit everybody,” he said.

Cochrane said rationalizing the rules would be considerably cheaper than continuing to sink the millions of dollars into fixing Phoenix.

The government has long been criticized for the way it manages the compensation of its employees — its biggest single cost.

Critics say there is no big picture or strategy, decisions are made piecemeal and salaries go through boom-and-bust cycles, with governments handing out generous raises in good times and capping salaries in bad times.

Daviau said many of the rules, such as for allowances and other perks, were instituted by the government to placate employees when it wanted to hold the line on salary increases.

Cochrane said he supports PIPSC’s premise that public servants have a better understanding of the rules and should be central to any new system.

Daviau maintains federal IT workers could build a new system within a year — sooner than Phoenix could be fixed. She said these in-house specialists understand the pay process because they managed the old 40-year-old payroll system and are among those now working to fix Phoenix.

Under her proposal, the government would have two pay tracks — with its own technology workers developing a new pay system while it continues to pay employees with Phoenix.

She proposed the new system be built on the latest version of PeopleSoft, which is also the basis for Phoenix. PeopleSoft is the off-the-shelf software that technology giant IBM adapted for the government’s payroll.

So far, the government has not commented on the specifics of the PIPSC proposal but insists it is “committed to finding a permanent solution.”

A spokesman for Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough said the government’s priority is to ensure public servants are accurately paid as soon as possible and her department is working with union leaders to find innovative solutions to the pay crisis that has gripped the government for 20 months.

“We are listening to concerns and issues raised by employees, and we are committed to working collaboratively at all levels to resolve them as quickly as possible,” said Ashley Michnowski, a spokesperson for Qualtrough, in an email.

“PSPC continues to work with all partners, including union leadership, to find innovative and efficient solutions to the pay issues.”