The FDA Mismanages Employee Pay And Benefits
1 CommentBy Ed Silverman // November 5th, 2008 // 10:06 am
The FDA may be on a hiring spree and snared 1,300 new faces, but consider the working environment - a suffocating bureaucracy, ever-changing leadership, compensation that lags industry pay and, as it turns out, woeful record-keeping that shortchanges employees.
In a letter to FDA commish Andy von Eschenbach, Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the US Senate Finance Committee, writes that “high-level FDA officials and others have complained” about paycheck errors that resulted in “legal fees and sloppy record keeping.” The errors have “shaken confidence” in the FDA’s personnel management.
“Based on the reports that have come to me, it looks like there is more than isolated incidents of mismanagement, and it could have significant repercussions for the quality workforce that the public deserves to have at the Food and Drug Administration,” he writes.
A few examples: an FDA employee went to the emergency room in the middle of the night with a sick child, but discovered the FDA had incorrectly fired him, which meant there were no health benefits. Two employees may have been mistakenly overpaid by several thousand dollars, triggering threatening debt-collection letters, misstated income taxes, and legal and accounting fees. And a new employee wasn’t paid for several pay periods because the employee “fell out of the system.”
Of course, given the terrible economy, what’s a little inconvenience?
Anon.
Reading the letter it seems to hint that these problems may be a subtle form of harassment.
This has been my concern also although it is impossible to prove. For example the switch to a new time and attendance systems occurred during the week of July 4th which except for the end of December is when the greatest number of reviewers take vacation. In spite of this reviewers were told that they had to verify their personal information in the new time and attendance system during this week otherwise they might have problems that would be very difficult to fix.
Policies were changed so that special permission has to be obtained each week to build up compensatory time and credit time on Sundays. This has severely impacted Jewish reviewers who did this so they wouldn’t have to use excessive amounts of vacation time for religious holidays.
Under the new system you need to ask for permission with the exact time you are taking off for Drs. appointments. You not only have to put the request in via the computer systems but also have to send an e-mail requesting permission first. Then if your Dr. appt runs long you have to get everything corrected which requires special input from a centralized office.
Reviewers are having to spend so much time on fixing these things that it is cutting into the time for doing reviews. If you’re contientious you then do the review work by working on your own time in the evening or weekends, but of course there’s no money in the budget to pay for this and it’s illegal to do it if you’re not paid, so you have to do it serreptitiously otherwise you can get it trouble.
It seems to some of us that these systems and changes in policy might be being used as a form of harassment and retaliation for saying things in reviews or meetings that the companies don’t like. Of course there’s no way to prove that.