International Union of Operating Engineers Union Dues Deduction

Good Afternoon All,

Our employees in the Engineering Department recently voted in Local 30 of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). Employee union dues are calculated on 1.5% of all wages paid to the employee and the minimum dues for each month is $35.00. The dues are to come out on all cycles where wages are paid. If the employee is on leave then the hospital does not withhold any dues (the employee is responsible for this deduction on their own).

We are having an issue setting this up based on the following 2 plausible scenarios with our bi-weekly payroll:

1. The employee for the 2nd pay period of the month falls below the minimum $35.00 dues mandated by the union. Payroll goes in and puts in a record on PR39 - One Time Deduction for the difference to bring the employee up to the minimum. It comes to light the employee was missing hours for the pay period and is subsequently issued a payment through PR80 - Manual Check with additional dues. The dues on the PR80 would have brought the employee over the minimum $35.00 mark, so now the employee is over-deducted for Union Dues.

2. A Per Diem employee works the 1st pay period of the month and has dues come out, but is below the $35.00 mark. The Per Diem then does NOT work any hours in the 2nd pay period of the month and falls below the minimum dues for the month.

The Payroll Team and I have been attempting to come up with a way to accommodate these scenarios while staying within the confines of the union rules, but have not come up with procedure for this as of yet. Has anybody else had experience with setting up union dues for IUOE Local 30?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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unknown

Hi Tommy, we have to figure dues according to a similar formula: Here's how we handle it:

1. Put all the pays for union dues into a payclass (PR20)

2. Set the deduction cycles to take the deduction monthly

3. Put the payclass on the PR05 for the union dues deduction, and set the calc type on the deduction to X (custom)

Setting the calc type to X on the deduction causes PR140 to reference a piece of code called PRUEDED that Lawson designed for 4GL COBOL custom code that the customers can create themselves. When PR140 hits your union dues deduction and sees that the calc type is X, it will calculate the deduction according to your custom code, with the pays that are in the payclass on the deduction. Doing this allowed us to deduct a minimum amount if the the percentage amount was not enough. If you have no COBOL programmers in your shop, try Infor Professional Services, or one of the 3rd party Infor partners. Having them create this for you and then maintain it if needed when new contracts are ratified will save you a lot of trouble.

unknown

Hey pblesky,

I had a similar thought doing this through IPA since I am not a COBOL programmer myself. How do you se the deduction cycles to take the deduction monthly? We generally set deductions to take on Cycles 1, 2 or 3 based on when payroll is processing.

Which pay period do you utilize to take the monthly deduction? Do you have the deduction take out on the 1st of the month? What if the employee had no wages in that particular cycle, how would the program know that the employee still owes dues for that month?

If you are taking the deduction monthly then how are you accounting for all wages paid to the employee during the month? If the dues would have gone over the minimum then it would need to deduct that higher amount. On the other side if the employee missed hours during the pay period and it was issue on a PR80 how do you account for that if it would have pushed the employee over the minimum?

I like the idea of a custom calculation and would probably implement it through IPA, but it gets tricky when these different scenarios are contemplated.

unknown

Ok Tommy I've been thinking about your situation, and when I read your original note again you guys are a little different than what we have. Here are some initial thoughts. Ask your payroll department about these ideas and maybe it will inspire you or them to come up with something brilliant!

I'm thinking you might want to have 2 deduction codes. Your union employees are paid biweekly, so if you have a $35/month minimum, their dues are at least 16.15 each check. I would have payroll set up a "union minimum" deduction for each of the employees for that amount, and just let that take every check. Then run a flow each pay period to update a second "union extra" deduction that would contain the amount > 16.15. I think I would do this as a descending balance deduction, with balance amount = deduction amount, to ensure that it will only come out one time (since this one can change each pay period, or not take at all depending on their wages).

For your scenario 1 above, that is going to involve manual work no matter what. If you have the "union minimum" deduction set up, they have already paid the minimum for sure. If they now owe extra dues do to the additional hours, then someone will need to calculate how much they owe and put it on the "union extra" deduction PR14, so it will take when they do the PR80. To keep the "union minimum" from taking again, they have to stop it, either by blanking out the corresponding deduction cycle on the "union minimum" PR14, washing it, or using a special deduction cycle on PR80 that the "union minimum" deduction does not take on. Your payroll dept should be familiar with some of this - ask them what they do if, for instance, they do a PR80 and they don't want the insurance deductions to come out - this would be similar.

For scenario 2, I believe this will always also be somewhat manual. If the per diem employee is still employed and you expect them to have more wages at some point, you'll have to enter "union minimum" arrears for them. You can use the PR136 report to see who is missing time records.

Of course, in theory, you could create a flow that does all these things for them, and bundles everything into a single deduction as well, woohooo. It depends how much transparency and granularity you need.

If the union does not require you to submit some kind of report proving to them that you are paying the correct amount, I would also create a YTD report for your payroll dept showing the eligible wages, a calculated YTD union dues amount, and the actual YTD dues paid for each union employee, so when the union comes after you saying you owe them money, you have something to show them.

OK, that's a start!

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