CallSteward and Local 99 win at NLRB Suit !
As happens from time to time people working through our Hiring Hall have taken us to task regarding their Placements and the Procedures we fallow to put them to work.
Local 99 was recently sued by an individual, working placements through our Hiring Hall, filed through the Denver Offices of the NLRB.
I was obliged to go back over two years of payrolls to reconstruct the placement of the individual filing suit. Day by day, line by line for every call dispatched from January 2007 through March of 2008.
I had to identify every opportunity the claimant had worked, what positions and rate of pay. Further, I had to make comparisons to similarly placed employees working parallel to the claimant.
In that year, we had placed well over 12,000 labor calls, some months averaging 1,200 labor requests.
Wishing to be as cooperative as possible with the NLRB I photo copied every single time sheet and payroll for submission to the Agent in Charge of the complaint. They received something approaching a ream of paper trail regarding the Claimant.
Fortunately, in March of 2008 we installed Call Steward and put the program into service dispatching all of our Labor Requests.
Given the remarkable visibility afforded the users of Call Steward I was able to identify every placement of the Claimant, all his Accepts or Declines, the order and time he was called and provide clear comparisons of others that were placed on similar or the same calls.
The paper chase for the previous year took me about 12 hours to compile! The information available through Call Steward took me about an hour to extract, edit and printout.
The print out of the reports from our Call Steward Data Base were clear, direct and helped us contradict all the allegations made by the Claimant.
When the complaint was ‘Dismissed without Merit’ the Agent representing the NLRB quoted specific information collected from Call Steward as grounds for the dismissal of the charges.
If I may…
Call Steward has improved our accountability and accuracy for all our placements. It has sped up our dispatching process by an easy 50% and cut back on phone time another 10% to 15% for those that are able to Accept or Decline calls online.
The access online to our Calendar makes the picture of upcoming work, hourly, daily and weekly clear and understandable. Thus allowing both the Dispatch Department and our labor pool to plan our lives and work schedules most effectively.
It has eliminated all arguments regarding Seniority and Placement because everybody can see who was called, will be called and when.
As our Data Base has matured everything one needs to know from Seniority to email to skills to fines and suspensions is available in one location.
I know the Stewards are making good use of the Sign-in Sheets using, sorted by Seniority or Last Name, print outs that show Call Times, Placements and phone numbers.
If everybody had Text or Instant Messaging, we could just flash mail out the labor requests and wait for the Call to fill itself…
Wouldn’t that be prefect!
My personal thanks, on behalf of the Dispatch Department of Local 99, to everybody at Call Steward for making our jobs easier.
Patrick Heltman
Business Agent, IATSE Local 99
Local 99 Retires the 'Binder'
"The transparency this software has provided us is already invaluable. The members really like being able to have the crew list hyperlinked to the calendar. It's very intuitive. The interface is generally very clear and intuitive; I've only provided minimal direction to my people.
The way we used to get information out was far from ideal, even for the tech savvy. And you know full well that when you get THE BINDER, that it's a case of "with these three rings, I thee wed." And no way to really keep good records and logs of anything, since it all changes so quickly.
Anyway, I can gush more later. I am sharing a call today with a steward who watched me add someone to his crew. From across town. I almost cried. It's been a long road for me to get stagehands into last century, much less this one. This shows them that they can see everything that happens, in real time, and it is OK. That is huge for our members, and our permit workers like that their data is being managed more effectively."
"I retired the notebook today. It’s on display in the dispatch office."
"Our tech-savvy stewards and members have caught on pretty well without much help....One thing that continues to impress me is that the code is so clean and well-planned that it runs cleanly on my CELL PHONE's browser! (Opera Mini)"
I.A.T.S.E. Local 99 Salt Lake City, Utah
Local 107 Adopts Change
"CallSteward.com has completely changed our unions life. I was hoping to bring our local into the 1990's, instead we are very much at the cutting edge of todays technology. I would venture to say that we are the future. If you are looking for help dispatching calls, filing reports, trackingtrends and employers than this is the application for you.
Better yet CallSteward.com has created an application that allows for a new relationship to happen between the dispatcher and the workers. It is now a partnership that both simplifies the job of the Dispatcher and empowers the members. Both now working together to better accomidate our crazy schedules.
There has been one last bonus that must be mentioned. As a Union we wanted change. We wanted permission to use our voice and be heard. We wanted transparency. As simple as it may seem, this one creation has been that tool with which our union has used to embrace that change."
I.A.T.S.E. Local 107 Oakland, California
Local 611 uses CallSteward to Keep Informed
"An IA dispatcher's job will never be easy but Callsteward.com certainly makes it easier. It streamlines the data entry process, offers SMS text communication, and tracking job changes and shift counts becomes a matter of mouse clicks, not data mining. The tech support is top notch, with great response time and solid solutions."
I.A.T.S.E. Local 611 Santa Cruz/Monterey, California