SHARE organizers met again recently with UMass Memorial to discuss payroll updates in the wake of the international takedown of Kronos in December of 2021 (You can find more context and read previous SHARE updates here.) W2’s make this an already busy time for Payroll, but they continue to make progress toward getting things back to normal. According to Sergio Melgar, UMass Memorial Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer:
To the best of their knowledge, Payroll believes that, after a year of work, underpayments due to the Kronos hack have now been corrected: Payroll has processed all of the discrepancies that have been submitted.
The big work left to be done by Payroll is overpayments – there are about one thousand employees in that situation. Very few of the overpayments have been collected so far, except in cases where an employee would be leaving the institution, or where the employee requested to begin the process because they recognized they would be required to make a big payback..
Recoupment will start soon, probably March. Although the employer is legally entitled to recoup any overpayments, the hospital is currently evaluating the idea of a a “forgiveness threshold.” Because there’s a certain cost to processing collections the hospital expects to waive the repayments from those who were overpaid less than a certain amount. The amount of the threshold is yet to be defined.
Paid Time Off/Earned Time banks are now believed to be correct. Some banks were allowed to go negative, and some banks even did so by hundreds of hours. The hospital is currently evaluating plans to allow employees to make that up over time.
Although SHARE continues to advocate that each member be issued an accounting statement describing the details of their personal situation — the dates and amounts of any corrections have been made in your case — the employer tells us that creating a simple report is impossible in practical terms, due to the complexity of each case, the variables involved from bargaining unit to bargaining unit, incentives, etc.
The hospital is legally required to make sure your pay is correct. SHARE members who believe that their pay or accrued time remain incorrect may contact the Payroll office directly to work out the details. Because reviewing each case can involve several hours for a Payroll Rep, only so many requests can be handled per day, and the queue for a review appointment is likely to be long. Inquiries and disputes should be directed to payrollummhc@umassmemorial.org.
A new, unknown type of hack was cause of the previous international cyber-attack on Kronos. We came back in record time compared to other institutions. No one can promise that the systems that UMass Memorial uses will forever remain impervious to cyberattack in the future. However, Sergio Melgar describes that UMass Memorial is rated highly in terms of cyber security, and those systems are subject to continuous review.