Again, thank you all for your outpouring support for this petition. We have a little over 200 signatures.
Did you know, in the state of Washington, if an overpayment occurs and is not detected within the ninety-day period, the employer cannot adjust an employee's current or future wages to recoup the overpayment- WAC 296-126-030???
Our Oregon co-workers do not have this same protection. Today, I wrote about 30 Oregon State Senators to look into this issue. This is all due to your support. A copy of my email is below.
"Dear Oregon Senators:
In 2021, our employer, Kaiser Permanente (KP), HR system moved to HRconnect. This system has resulted in many errors, many of which have caused financial harm to frontline healthcare professionals.
It is unclear how deep the errors are with the programming for HRconnect truly are. In January 2021, due to a system glitch, over 50 staff members were “overpaid”. KP only found the errors months later and started bringing each member in for audits. Due to state law, in Washington, KP could not collect for overages as they had missed their legal timeline (“If the overpayment is not detected within the ninety-day period, the employer cannot adjust an employee's current or future wages to recoup the overpayment”- WAC 296-126-030.). This law does not exist for members who live in Oregon.
In each audit I sat with staff members, staff asked KP how did this error occur? How can I prevent this from happening again? We were told, that it was due to no error of the staff member, but a system error. When asked “how did the computer figure out how much to overpay me?” No answer provided. Several members were afraid of repercussions and went ahead and paid the money KP could not prove they owed.
When errors in our pay occur, it’s months to resolve or to even get a response. When we go to our employer, we are told to go to the union. The union has no access or direct input over KP systems.
For the last year, we have filed endless complaints. Individually many of us have turned to our respective State’s labor and industry.
KP says that they have taken “sufficient action” to resolve issues which is filing a claim on HRconnect and waiting a minimum of 45 business days for a response and often we find that the claims have been closed with no resolution. By Oregon law, ORS 652.610(3), KP cannot withdraw money from our pay without our consent, or in writing. Yet, this is common for Kaiser to do so Washington does not have such a law.
I along with over 200 employees are asking for help (see attached).
Can you help us get the same protections that many of our coworkers have in SW Washington already have under WAC 296-126-030?
If you would like to learn more about the issues we have been experiencing with our pay issues please feel free to look at our change.org petition.
https://www.change.org/KPFixHRconnect
In Unity,
Katie Johnson, BSN, RN, AMB-BC"