Action on New Core/ Payroll
Payroll issues have continued this month and worse, a number of members have not been paid at all yesterday and are still currently awaiting an urgent payment to ensure they have the money they need to survive. We urgently need the problems with the payroll system to be fixed – it’s utterly ridiculous that a University of this size and income can’t manage to pay people on time.
Many payroll staff as well as members who have been reassigned to work in payroll are doing their absolute utmost to fix the problems, and many remained at work late into the evening. We don’t blame them for this – we blame the people who decided to push ahead with a completely new, untested system without doing the necessary work to fix bugs and train staff properly in all of the necessary procedures. We need to know when the decision to push ahead with this system was made and we need to hold those who made the decision accountable. The level of disruption this has caused to people’s lives, everyday work at the University and the University’s reputation is incalculable.
Other problems people have experienced with the system include:
- Greatly delayed overtime payments, with members waiting in some cases months for their overtime payments to come through
- Payments to casual workers and stipends for graduate students being delayed or drastically reduced
- Deductions for travel passes being too high and continuing into payment “holidays”
- Deductions for car parking being made outside of the right month and with no way of knowing what week they relate too
- Trans staff and students have been outed because the system lacked a preferred name feature at the time of launch
The issues today have been covered by the BBC on TV and online – see http://uobunison.org.uk/oct-payday for more information.
Contact us if you’ve been affected
We need to confirm how widespread the problems are. The University claims that only roughly 3% of staff and student workers have been affected in total by all issues (though that is still hundreds of workers).
When many staff still haven’t managed to produce payslips (and the payslips are very difficult to understand), we feel that the number affected is probably much higher. We can offer anyone who has been affected advice on your situation and we can refer cases for legal advice and support.
If you’ve been affected by these issues:
- Fill out our new core survey – we’re using this information to challenge the University’s statistics and to allow us to follow up with those affected about their rights and what we can do to help
- Come to one of our advice drop-ins which will focus solely on this issue – tomorrow 9-12pm in the Union office in Aston Webb or Wednesday the 6th November 12-4pm in Arts G13.
- We’re holding a meeting just on New Core and the problems caused – please come if you’ve been affected, want to help or just want to find out more – Friday at 12:30pm in Learning Centre UG07
