Thursday, March 28, 2024

Benefits for Businesses of Not Managing Union Dues

One of the most important aspects of running a union is collecting dues because these funds keep the lights on and allow the union to pursue its collective bargaining initiatives. Traditionally, these dues are collected by deductions from member paychecks or paid directly via cash or check to the union. Still, new and innovative payment systems allow unions to manage their dues collection more effectively.

There are significant costs associated with a business managing union dues on its own. Allowing the union to collect these fees will relieve them of this added financial burden. Using traditional payroll methods to deduct union dues can easily lead to accounting errors, so specialized software is required to manage this effectively. For businesses, this can be an added cost with little to no benefit to them, but unions have far more cost-effective and beneficial solutions for their operations. Most unions will see the value in this small additional cost for the added convenience and functionality for them and their members.

Perhaps the most costly aspect of collecting dues payments is the cost of labor to chase down members and encourage them to pay their dues. It can take thousands of hours for admins and business managers to hunt down dues payments, and several systems allow unions to manage this process in a streamlined manner. By allowing unions to handle dues collections through one of these systems rather than doing it themselves, businesses can spare themselves the headache that the typical process entails.

All of this money that businesses can save by allowing unions to collect their own dues can be reallocated to other initiatives that will positively impact both the employer and their employees, such as increased employee benefits. Increasing the budget for employee benefits reflects in the quality of care they will receive, increasing employee satisfaction and happiness. A little bit can go a long way in terms of what you offer your employees, and a show of thanks such as increasing benefits can boost morale unexpectedly well.

Additionally, allowing unions to collect their own dues will ensure that organizations can select a dues selection system explicitly structured for their needs. There are services for unions that would enable them to create custom pages tailored to what they and their members need. After all, unions represent their members’ interests, so no one knows what members need to pay their dues better than the union itself. These customizations can make the experience less frustrating for union members.

One of the benefits of not managing union dues payments in-house is that it increases mobility and convenience for your employees to pay their dues. There are several apps on the market which allow employees to pay their dues from the comfort of their phones or computers. With this, employees no longer have to worry about planning a trip to their local union office to pay their dues. They can submit their payment from anywhere they are at any time they want, making the process significantly more accessible and convenient for the user.

Furthermore, checks and cash are quickly becoming obsolete forms of payment. These days, everyone seems to be conducting their transactions using debit and credit cards or virtual wallet systems such as Apple Pay, Paypal, and the like. And when it comes to paying bills, a majority of these recurring charges are handled online using credit or debit card information. These new dues collection systems allow employees to pay for their dues with an increased variety of payment methods. Although this flexibility in terms of payment method may seem like just an added convenience, it is more than that. If union members don’t have to worry about how they will have to deliver their payment, there are fewer obstacles in the way of them submitting their payment.

There are some obvious benefits to businesses for them to not manage dues collection on their own. In addition to eliminating the difficulties of dues collection and reducing costs for the company, there are significant benefits for the employees. It’s in the best interest of everyone involved for companies to allow the union to handle these responsibilities using a specialized platform to collect the money from their members.

Scott Heric is the Co-Founder of Unionly. He was born and raised in Seattle. He helped develop sales and account management for Avvo, growing from 30 to 500 people over 7 years. After Avvo, Scott took a Chief of Staff role at Snap Advance, which at the time was part of a company called Snap Mobile Inc. For over 4 years he oversaw development of the product, marketing, sales, and account management, leading to the company being the leading digital fundraising platform in higher education. Having worked on the concept for Unionly for over 3 years and after being acquired in January of 2020, Scott began to really think about making Unionly a reality and in April of 2020, that dream came true.

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