Salary mess | The employee in Helsinki got so angry about the pay mess that he had to stay on sick leave

Helsinki the pay mess doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. The Helsinki child protection social worker says that his measure is full and he is seriously considering quitting his job.

He does not appear in the story under his own name, because he does not want to be recognized due to his sensitive job description.

The employee has been tormented for months, because he has been owed thousands of euros from the city of Helsinki for weeks.

He was paid half of the salary for August, but the salary for September was not paid at all. The city of Helsinki has said that the wages that have not been paid in full will be credited to the account within two business days of contact.

Read more: Thousands of people are still waiting for the Helsinki salary mess to be resolved

Read more: Once again, thousands of Helsinki workers received the wrong salary

At worst, there were about 6,000 euros worth of missing wages.

Situation has been very difficult financially. The employee just bought a detached house with her husband, which they are renovating. Everyday expenses have been paid from the husband’s wages and savings.

Sometimes there was no money to go to work.

“Now the situation came where the money ran out. I had to think about whether I could buy gas to get to work.”

Economically the uncertain and stressful situation has also affected motivation. At first, he thought that he would completely stop going to work as a protest if the salary was not paid.

However, the end result was a sick leave, the real reason of which is “constant bullshit”.

“I stated that I cannot go to work. He was so angry that I was shaking with anger. I couldn’t meet with client families, when the thought of how to buy food for my family and how to pay the bills was always in the back of my mind. I thought I wasn’t able to work then.”

Her credit to the city of Helsinki is zero, and she no longer cares at all what her employer thinks of her after numerous complaints.

The salary for one and a half months finally came to the account last Friday. The money only reached its destination when the employee together with his supervisor had sent messages for salary payment every day for a week. The management of social affairs and child protection also got angry about the situation regarding the payment of wages.

On the other hand, not all salary receipts have arrived yet, so it is not possible to be completely sure whether all payments have been paid properly.

“This is an incomprehensible situation”, the employee sums up his feelings.

Helsinki manager responsible for stabilizing the city’s payroll Kirsti Laine-Hendolin says that he is very sorry for the employee’s situation. According to him, when correcting wage errors, priority is given to paying completely missing wages and largely missing wages.

“This incident is very unfortunate. For some reason, the information about the missing salary has not reached customer service, in which case the error could have been corrected in two days.”

The city of Helsinki has promised to pay the missing wages in full within two business days of contact and the largely missing wages within five business days of contact.

Laine-Hendolin says that the notification process has now been checked together with the payroll administration. Supervisors and personnel services of the branches are once again instructed on how to act in similar situations, so that mistakes do not happen again.

“First of all, of course, we strive to ensure that such mistakes do not occur in the first place. However, there have been regrettable exceptions.”

Helsinki The chaos caused by the Sarastia salary payment system will continue at least through the autumn. There are almost 10,000 contact requests in the payroll customer service queue.

“The stabilization will take this fall, but it is clear that process improvements will still be made next year and additional resources will be needed to stabilize the situation,” says Laine-Hendolin.

“We will do everything we can to correct these mistakes, but it will take time.”

The matter was clarified on 26.10. at 4:53 p.m. The city of Helsinki has promised to pay the missing wages within two and five business days of contact, not within two and five days.

Correction 26.10. at 19:38: Corrected the title and intro to sick leave instead of sick leave.