Geo is right - just because one suffered does not mean everyone has to.
The clerk piping up about it taking 7-8 months for her to get paid deserves a kick in the arse - instead of using that as an excuse for others to have to wait she should have learned what went wrong in her case and taken action to prevent the same problem for others. Seems to me the unit has a very negative attitude about taking care of people.
For the woman that transferred to regs and had to wait for proper pay: again, because she suffered others should?? Because either she did not take care of herself or had crappy clerks take care of her you should put up with it??
Without knowing all the details it is hard to advise fully how to proceed. You could request a copy of your pers and pay file to see what, if anything, they have done. It may have information on what the problem is.
Understand about not wanting to push your luck as an OCdt but if done properly this could be a chance to shine a bit. Talk to the Capt and explain to her that the main frustration is the lack of communication. You have 20 members that have pay problems and no one is telling you what the problem is. Suggest that perhaps the master Jack from the OR could give a small brief to you as a group explaining what the problem is and what the unit is doing to resolve it as a PR measure for clerks. Explain that at the moment it appears that the clerks either don't know what they are doing or simply don't care (of course stress you are not saying this is true but that it is the appearance as info is not being passed). It would help if you could talk to some of the others that are having problems and get 1 or 2 to go with you - thus it takes away from the appearance that you are just a trouble maker.
When I ran the pay office (back when there were real fin clks to take care of you >
) we started a nice system that involved a pay form - worked amazing. If you had a problem with your pay on pay parade (going back a bit here) you went to another table, completed a form and passed it to the clerk. After parade I went through the forms and assigned them to the clerk to deal with. Now comes the part I am sure you will really like - the following week a copy of the form with an explanation of what the problem was and how we were dealing with it was sent back to you approved by me. One week was all the time the clerk had to get you an answer and "it is Ottawa" was not accepted. Not saying the problem was fixed in a week but you knew what the problem was and that we were fixing it. If needed we were able to circumvent the system and get you your full pay for you. (as a side, less than 1% were problems due to the Fin Staff. At the time the accepted standard on the QL3 Fin practical test was a 70% accuracy, down from 90% when I did it)
At least request to review your pay card so you can confirm the dates with your records (you do have a record, right?). Check it every month and ensure they are giving you your full pay, not just small "take this and be happy" amounts. I can never stress it enough - a problem with the system does not justify under paying someone. There are numerous ways to pay someone. Hell, I and some coworkers were known to get the member a cashier cheque and then go to a branch of their bank to deposit it for them, sometimes the mbr didn't even know there was a problem.
