By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this month, the city of Seattle replaced its payroll software, an obsolete system called EV5, with a new platform called Workday. The transfer, which had been in the works for the past four years, did not go smoothly. Immediately after the city moved all its 13,000-plus employees to the new system, people began reporting problems, including missing transfers to retirement programs, disappearing vacation hours, and paychecks that bore no relationship to what they actually made.

Over the past few weeks, city employees have told PubliCola about issues with their paychecks that go far beyond technical glitches, including overpayments of several hundred dollars and underpayments that amount to half a paycheck or more. Some of the most alarming problems we’ve heard from city employees about include:

• Paychecks that have reportedly ranged from as little as 3 cents to $500 for two weeks of full-time work, including one employee who got paid for 52 hours in one 80-hour pay period. The city has sent out a step-by-step guide to many employees to help them fix time sheet errors, but even those who troubleshoot issues on their won’t receive the “corrected” payments until the next pay cycle—a real problem for anyone living paycheck to paycheck.

• Vanishing deferred compensation payments. City employees can automatically transfer some of their pay, tax-free, into retirement accounts held by Nationwide Insurance; since Workday was implemented, the money has been coming out of people’s paychecks but still hasn’t shown up in their Nationwide accounts, and the city hasn’t yet figured out where it went.

• Disappearing vacation, sick, and paid leave time. Employees have reported that various forms of accrued time off—a benefit that’s part of their compensation—has been lower than it’s supposed to be, meaning that benefits they’ve accrued have, at least temporarily, disappeared.

• Overtime hours that should show up as extra pay are instead appearing on people’s paychecksas comp time—hours that employees can take off at a later date.

• Employees working “out of class” in higher-level positions, those in “acting” (rather than permanent) roles, and those whose job classifications (and pay) were supposed to go up a “step” saw their paychecks revert to what they made before their salary bumps.

• In addition to all the same problems other city workers experienced, police and fire department employees on pension plans had social security taxes taken out of their paychecks in error.

Julie Johnson, chief of staff for the city’s finance department, acknowledged that “challenges remain” in implementing Workday, but added that while “discrepancies are expected in an organization of our size, we are actively resolving these issues by addressing system problems and providing additional training to employees and payroll processors. This will improve accuracy and the overall payroll experience.”

In an email to HR managers across the city, the city’s internal Workday team had this to say about the disappearing payments: “We understand the significant impact this may have on employees and their financial wellbeing. … The Workday team is taking immediate and comprehensive steps to resolve this issue. Specific corrective guidance on an individual basis will be provided at a later date.”

City officials was aware that other jurisdictions and agencies have had similar troubles with Workday in the past—among them the University of Washington, where problems with Workday delayed hundreds of research grants earlier this year, and Los Angeles, where employees experienced  under- and overpayments for months after the city implemented Workday earlier this year. And employees of the state of Oregon, which implemented Workday last year, filed multiple lawsuits after problems with their paychecks dragged on for months.

The problems in Oregon issues, according to the Salem Statesman Journal, included many of the same issues city of Seattle workers are experiencing now: “missing or late paychecks; incorrect pay rates; incorrect and excess deductions for retirement, health and dental benefits; misreporting of wages to the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System; incorrect accrual and deductions from vacation and leave banks; and late payments to employees at retirement or end of employment.”

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As we reported back in April, the city delayed union-bargained pay increases, including retroactive pay for 2023 and 2024, to thousands of employees, saying they needed to focus on implementing Workday first. Although some of those workers did get paid this past summer, 1,200 employees represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 77 are still waiting on the retroactive checks, which remain delayed while the city addresses issues with Workday.

“Completing the retroactive payments for IBEW is a priority for us,” Johnson said last Friday. “We are developing a plan of action for implementing retroactive payments and working with Labor Relations to provide more specific information by next week.”

On October 4, the Professional and Technical Employees Local 17 (PROTEC17) sent an email to members saying they were aware that Workday “implementation has been riddled with design problems, project mismanagement, and communication breakdowns. We have heard from many of you about inexcusable delays in receiving your proper paychecks.”

The Coalition of City Unions, a larger umbrella group that includes PROTEC17, had “pressed City of Seattle Labor Relations to immediately resolve any outstanding pay issues,” the email continued. “However, there was a lack of clear definitive answers or deadlines, so we will continue to raise these issues to the Mayor’s office until all of our members are made whole.”

City payroll administrators have sent emails to employees in their departments over the past several weeks asking for patience as they deal with thousands of outstanding complaints and try to get the city’s Workday team to fix problems the payroll staffers aren’t authorized to address. “If your schedule appears to be incorrect or missing, taxes/deductions appear incorrect, your pay rates appear to be incorrect, or you notice other time and pay issues, please submit a support Ticket to the Workday Support team,” one payroll administrator wrote. “These settings are configured in Workday and Payroll cannot alter them directly.”

Johnson says that some of the paycheck “errors stem from system calculations”—internal problems with Workday—”and some are related to adoption challenges as people learn new systems like timekeeping data entry. Any necessary corrections are reflected in the following pay period.”

“Accurate time entry is important for accuracy in payroll processing and to ensure compliance with the law, including Fair Labor Standards Act,” Johnson continued. “With the implementation of Workday, more precise data are required to accurately capture work hours, leave and other time-related entries. While there is a learning curve, we’re providing support and resources to help employees adjust.”

By “timekeeping data entry,” Johnson is referring to Workday’s new, more complex time card system that requires all employees, from City Light line workers to office workers whose precise duties change unpredictably throughout the day, to record what they are doing all day, every day in 15-minute increments— a time-consuming and potentially risky prospect, if a manager decides to argue that a person was not writing emails from 8 to 8:30, for example, but attending a staff meeting.

“I can just see that someone’s going to make a mistake, and the next thing you know, they’re going to want to discipline our members,” Kovac said in July. “The city has those micromanagers too, and there are a handful that will use this as a discipline tool.”

The system is also fragile, union representatives said. If an employee fails to enter something in one a time field—for example, if they take lunch and fail to clock out by entering “meal,” or accidentally enter “out,” which means they’re done for the day, that can cause problems that may delay them getting paid. A representative for PROTEC17 said their members did not receive any formal training on the byzantine new time card system.

Another concern a different union leader described is that Workday isn’t configured to handle some changes to working conditions that the unions negotiated, such as a provision that expands the definition of “family” when determining if someone can take bereavement leave. Workday does not include this broader definition, and requries employees to produce a death certificate to prove someone has died, which is not a city requirement.

Only specific managers have access to Workday, and if a manager is out sick, or goes out of town, without “delegating” another supervisor as their temporary replacement, people’s checks may be delayed. An email from the Workday team to the city’s HR leaders (which, in small departments, may be the department director) explained that “[i]f you do not [designate a backup manager], your supervisor will not be able to act on any of your tasks, causing a delay in deadlines.”