Ed. note: we’re told the interns were paid the day after this post was published.
We’ve been informed of a situation at PwC, one that apparently has been brewing for days but that we only found about this afternoon because browsing the r/pwc subreddit isn’t something we do on a regular basis. Thank you to a tipster for reaching out and providing us with all the details. They write:
PwC did not pay 3,000 of their interns. Someone in payroll messed up, and we weren’t paid. Many of my fellow interns won’t sign full-time offers because of this. HR is dismissive and won’t resolve the issue. We were also supposed to get our sign on bonus with this paycheck. It’s been a month since we have been paid. One intern couldn’t pay his rent and is sleeping in his car in NYC.
Bet you there’s more than one PwC intern in NYC sleeping in their car tonight, rent’s no joke up there.
Additional information from our tipster: interns were supposed to be paid July 7th, the last check they received was June 20th. “HR has no idea what’s going on,” they said. “They’re blaming the banks and Federal Reserve.” There’s been no email communication from the firm to interns, rather individual interns have been calling to check the status of their paychecks, which are supposed to include bonuses, and having trouble reaching anyone at HR due to a backlog of thousands of interns wondering where TF their money is. We were provided screenshots that showed the intern bonus was “successfully completed” (paid) effective 6/30.
The issue may be related to the firm switching from ADP to DayForce a couple months ago, it’s unclear. Calendars also show something called “Workday Payroll Data Freeze,” no one seems to know what that is or if it’s related to the intern pay issue.
“Leadership is acting like everything is okay and PwC is the best accounting firm to work for,” added our tipster. “The firm is trying to not make it seem like anything is wrong. That’s why they haven’t sent us anything. And that’s why HR was so dismissive on the phone and through chat.” Several people on r/pwc who did get through to HR said they were told interns would be paid on July 20, a full month after their last paychecks.
A couple r/pwc posts on the subject:
Pay
by u/UltimateLyrker in PwC
Have any interns been paid yet for the period ending June 30th?
by u/Particular-Plate6791 in PwC
We’ll keep you posted if we hear more. If anyone can host displaced PwC NYC interns in the meantime let us know.
This is garbage – no identifying information, etc. AND NOT ONE INTERN OR EMPLOYEE would take in this person. Just a garbage post.
>>One intern couldn’t pay his rent and is sleeping in his car in NYC.<<
Agreed. Even if someone missed a rent payment, they wouldn’t get evicted the same day. This is low quality copy/paste “reporting”
OK, HR.
A multibillion dollar professional services organization screwed up payroll and SAID NOTHING to the people it owed money to. And here you are focusing on an anecdote from a tipster that was presented as such.
I can tell neither of you have ever been housing insecure. For someone living paycheck to paycheck, missing one check can be catastrophic. If you’re staying in a temporary situation in a city that’s known to be full of all kinds of illegal housing nonsense then yeah, you CAN end up in your car if you miss a check. A hotel or Airbnb isn’t going to let it slide, maybe he was staying on someone’s couch who knows. I included it because it is not an impossibility, especially in this economy and on an intern’s salary. A lot of those kids are from out of town, it’s not like they’re all signing year leases for an internship that lasts a couple weeks.
Maybe focus on the actual story, a story that no one else reported.
Great reporting, Adrienne!
Tbh not surprising. When I interned at the Seattle office a year or two ago, the same thing happened to a good percentage of Seattle interns, including myself. Luckily I was financially stable and didn’t notice the lack of pay, but about a dozen interns started talking with each other and found out it was a wider issue. Get it together, PwC! (My soon to be employer…)