Article content

No one thought it would come to this.

Miramichi and Shediac should have been working in tandem. Instead, two years after the launch of the unfortunate Phoenix pay system, these New Brunswick towns find themselves in an awkward embrace of technology and management gone wrong.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ground zero in the battle to stop the Phoenix pay virus from spreading Back to video

Miramichi of course is the epicentre of the government’s frantic effort to fix Phoenix — the deeply flawed decade-long project to modernize and consolidate a pay systemthat affects 300,000 government employees, about two-thirds of whom have their pay processed through the Miramichi office.

Nearly 700 pay administration workers there are struggling to whittle down a backlog of some 600,000 pay queries and transactions, most dealing with incorrect amounts on employees’ pay stubs.

Now these errors are threatening the government employees’ pension plan, run by a staff of 730 plus in nearby Shediac.

The Shediac employees are well placed to watch the drama unfold. They operate a call centre and handle the intricate details of a system that includes more than 850,000 government employees, pensioners and beneficiaries.