(The following story by Mark Young appeared on The North Platte Telegraph website on January 10.)
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. — In these tough economic times and with the Union Pacific Railroad having to furlough many of its employees, it might be nice to learn that your pay was doubled, but not when you have to give it back.
On Thursday, Union Pacific employees who receive direct deposit learned that their bank accounts had been fattened up by double paychecks due to a slight glitch in a new pay system set up by Union Pacific for their employees. The new system paid the employees, but so did the old one.
According to Corporate Relations and Media Director Mark Davis, the miscue was caught by the railroad and action has been taken to rectify the situation.
“It seems that our union employees who receive direct deposit were double-paid [Thursday],” he said. “Anyone who receives a paycheck other than direct deposit were not affected and we are working with the banks to rectify this as quickly as we can.”
Davis said Union Pacific employees don’t have to do anything themselves and that it would be taken care of for them.
Employees don’t have to worry about doing anything,” he said. “We’ve let all of our employees know about what happened and we’ll take care of the problem along with the banks we are working with. We do want to let our employees know that we are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused for them.”
Davis said that should any employees incur extra charges due to the mishap, Union Pacific would review each and every case and compensate the employees if it is deemed to be the fault of the financial hiccup. Davis did not have information as to whether or not the accounts set up by Union Pacific for payroll would also be impacted by the double payment to an undetermined number of employees.