For the third time since transferring payroll responsibility from CMP Augusta to the Energy East facility at Pineland, CMP will be notifying a large number of employees that their paychecks were miscalculated. While some will learn that the company owes them a refund, most who recieve letters will be notified that they owe the company money.

IBEW 1837 is advising ALL members who work at CMP to check your pay stubs carefully each week to be sure that your pay is calculated correctly, and that the right amount is deducted for your 401(k).

Also be sure to cross-check with your 401(k) statements to be sure that any contributions taken from your paycheck actually do end up in your 401(k) plan.

If you are or have been notified that you owe the Company money, do not sign the authorization until you have verified where and when the mistakes were made. You have the right to request a printout of your pay stubs that shows the errors. Ask for the printout and confirm that the amount they are asking you to repay matches actual errors in your pay before you authorize the company to deduct any payment from your checks.

Although the Company has assured us verbally that they have the problem under control and that it won’t happen again, they refuse to put the assurance in writing. While we are continuing to explore options for pressuring the company to make credible improvements to their system to restore confidence in pay calculations, members at CMP need to know that unless and until this is resolved there is no guarantee that your paycheck is correct unless you check it yourself. If you find any suspected errors, please make copies of the relevant pay stubs and/or 401(k) statements and contact your steward immediately.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR:

• 401(k) deductions should be made from pay for regular hours only.
• 401(k) deductions should not be made from pay for overtime or workers’ compensation.
• Money deducted from your paycheck for 401(k) accounts should then be included in the money contributed to your 401(k) on your next 401(k) statement.
• Make sure that payment for overtime is computed correctly
• Figure your pay carefully. Look for anything else that doesn’t match your own calculations. Although the most recent batch of errors is primarily related to 401(k) contributions, the previous two sets of errors were made in various other areas too numerous to mention.

Please share this update with your union co-workers. We currently have home email addresses for only about 1/3 of the members who work at CMP. Members who do not currently receive these updates but would like to can do so by contacting us with their HOME email address. They should be sure to include their full name and the company where they work in the message. A home phone number is also helpful in case of questions.