A demonstration against the Phoenix pay system organized by the Public Service Alliance of Canada union. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

A new government poll suggests over 40 per cent of federal employees experienced substantial problems last year with their pay under the problematic Phoenix system.

The 2018 annual survey of federal public service members also found that 22 per cent reported that issues with Phoenix have had a “large” or “very large” impact on their paycheques.

Each year, the federal government conducts employee opinion surveys, with questions touching upon issues like overall job satisfaction, training opportunities, workload and interpersonal relationships.

In the compensation section, the survey asked respondents what extent their “pay or other compensation has been affected by issues with the Phoenix pay system.”

[READ MORE: Phoenix needs time to rise from ashes of federal pay system: AG]

Of the over 160,500 respondents, 29 per cent reported no impact, while another 26 per cent reported their pay was impacted by Phoenix but only to a “small extent.” Twenty per cent said the effect was moderate, while 11 per cent each framed it as large or very large.

In followup questions on the sorts of pay issues employees have encountered, 35 per cent (out of 109,172 respondents) said they’ve been underpaid by Phoenix and 44 per cent (from 109,210 respondents) reported incorrect or missing acting pay, overtime pay or “other related extra duty pay.”

Sixty-five per cent of poll respondents (from 108,456) said their pay or compensation issues with Phoenix have not been solved.

Public Service Alliance of Canada president Chris Aylward said in a statement that the survey findings make “very clear” that the government must bolster its efforts to reduce day-to-day Phoenix cases and to eliminate the “massive backlog,” and must pay damages in compensation to affected members.

“Federal public service workers have been paying for the government’s mistakes for years, and it’s time for our government to start paying them back,” he said.

[READ MORE: Who’s to blame? Auditor General report puts Phoenix under the microscope]

Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat, the employer of the civil service, did not respond to requests for comment prior to deadline on Tuesday.

Since rolling out across government in the spring of 2016, Phoenix has botched paycheques for thousands of civil servants, souring the relationship between the Trudeau government and the public service unions.

The Senate finance committee estimated in a report last summer it would cost Ottawa $2.2 billion to fix the system by 2023, reports the Globe and Mail. The Trudeau government pledged an additional $431 million in the 2018 budget to fix it, and $16 million to begin replacing it.

The numbers on the extent of the problems with Phoenix are virtually identical to the results of the 2017 public service survey, when 30 per cent reported no effect and 24 only a small impact. Again, 11 per cent said their paycheques were impacted by a “large extent,” while 12 per cent called it “very large.” Last year, more than 174,000 federal public servants responded to the question.

More to come…