After a grueling month battling the Palisades Fire, some Los Angeles city firefighters are finding their paychecks a bit short.
Say, hundreds or thousands of dollars short.
The city is reportedly facing tech issues while transitioning its 20-year-old payroll system to a new software made by Workday, leading to shorted checks, missing bonuses, and accumulated sick and vacation time disappearing from the books. Last month, many checks were off by $1,000 due to the apparent misplacement of a decimal point.
“We've had firefighters report to work for all of their regular shifts, only then to receive a paycheck of $0,” a fire department representative said at Thursday’s city council meeting.
Firefighters say payroll issues have been going on for years, but they’ve been amplified since the transition to Workday began several years ago. City Council set out to investigate the problem a full year ago after months of complaints from first responders.
Last July, Councilmember Tim McOsker called the council back from recess for a special meeting to discuss the problem. But it appears the issues with the $100 million software still haven’t been fixed.
On Thursday, McOsker told KNX News’ Craig Fiegener he’s determined to get to the bottom of the issue.
“It's unacceptable that firefighters would not be paid properly,” he said. “The time is put into one system and then it's converted over to the workday system, and we're identifying whether that extra step might be the problem.”
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McOsker said he and Councilmember Heather Hutt recently held a meeting with Workday officials as well as City Controller Kenneth Mejia. Workday has committed to deploying seven staffers to L.A. to help solve the issue. Mejia also asked for additional staffers to work on the problems.
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