Clark County Sheriff's Office vehicles sit on a hill at WSU Vancouver for a gun rights rally in October 2018.
Editor's note: Clark County responded to The Reflector's request for comment after press deadline. It reads:
Clark County is in the final stages of transitioning to Workday, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, to provide HRIS and Financial Management. As with all transitions of this magnitude, the county may find areas that need further review. The county is committed to addressing any concerns that are brought forward as well as take advantage of new technologies Workday implements. Overall, the transition to Workday has been a success.
The Clark County Deputy Sheriff’s Guild has filed a formal complaint to the Washington State Auditor’s Office over the county’s shift to a new payroll system which the guild says has caused no shortage of headaches for officers and support staff making sure they get paid what they worked for.
In a Feb. 11 news release, the guild, the labor union representing sheriff officers, laid out the issues it had with Clark County’s recent implementation of the new Workday payroll system. The release explained that because of the nature of officers’ schedules the new system wasn’t compatible with the deputies.
Clark County Sheriff’s Detective and guild executive board member Joe Swenson explained that the deputies had 24-hour schedules that, alongside complexity of pay scales based on experience, complicated their payroll amounts. In some cases, pay calculations led officers to be underpaid.
“Some of these folks are looking at hundreds of dollars that they have been shorted so far,” Swenson said. Holiday pay had been a particular sticking point as he recalled some deputies still had not been paid overtime for work on Thanksgiving.
Swenson is also worried for those who have been overpaid, given that the county would come back and ask for that money. It wasn’t the employees’ fault for the discrepancy, he said.
What’s more, Swenson said that in some cases deputies’ benefits weren’t able to be used.
The switch to Workday was the result of the county’s old Oracle system being phased out due to a stop in support the county learned about in 2015, according to the county’s webpage regarding the shift. In December 2016 the shift to Workday was approved by county council, and in June 2018 the new software was implemented according to the guild letter.
Swenson said the sheriff’s office was not involved with the decision to shift to Workday. The guild letter stated that “immediately upon implementation” the software’s shortcomings were evident. The guild points to similar cases on the West Coast where Workday has caused issues, specifically one with the Sacramento City Unified School District and another in Multnomah County.
“It’s just been a nightmare,” Swenson remarked. He explained how the guild’s bargaining agreement made the discrepancies paid a contractual issue as that agreement was the final say in what deputies should receive as compensation.
Outside of the sheriff’s office, Swenson said that CRESA employees contracted with the county as well as Clark County Public Works had been affected given their own non-traditional schedules.
Swenson said the guild had initially tried to work out the issues at the county level to no avail. County staff tasked with leading the Workday project did not return a request for comment by press deadline.
Swenson’s letter to the state auditor summarizing the complaint called for “a complete audit of the Sheriff’s Office payslips.” He said that he received a reply from the state auditor, stating that they would look into the matter during their regularly-scheduled audit of the county this spring.
Swenson felt it was unlikely that the county would move to a different payroll service, though he saw a solution in changing how the system calculates pay.
“We just want to be paid what we are supposed to be paid so we don’t stress about it,” Swenson remarked, adding he has found himself thinking about issues with the software “whereas in the past it was never a thought.”
