UNDERSTANDING YOUR DUES DOLLARS
To understand your dues dollars, you must first understand what your financial report is telling you. When you look at our monthly financial report, you will notice there are three sections to it. The first section is the Report of Income and Expense. This part shows you where our money comes from and what it is spent on. The first section is what I will be explaining in this report.
INCOME:
The first line of the financial report under income is Regular Dues. That is the total amount of dues from everyone working in the plant in that particular month. Because of the drop in membership, that amount has been decreasing at a slow pace for a long period of time, for the last 10 to 12 years. At the beginning of 1996, we had 775 members. In March of 2006, we had 474 dues paying members, a loss of 300 members per month. That number will be dropping at an alarming rate for the rest of this year.
The next line of interest on the financial report under income is the Retired Workers Dues. When a member retires, he/she is given a Dues Check-off Card to sign, authorizing monthly membership dues of $2.00 to be automatically deducted from their pension check. That goes directly to the International Retirement Chapter and they send 35% of the total dues dollars collected from Local 544's retirees to us to be deposited into the Local's Retired Workers Chapter Fund.
Also under income is the rebate from the International Strike Fund. That amount is equal to 10% of our previous month's total dues dollars. We will continue to receive that as long as the strike fund is over 550 million dollars.
EXPENSES:
When you see Lost Time in the expense category, it is always reported as Lost Time (Officers) and Lost Time (Others). Those who are officers are all Executive Board members (President, Vice-president, etc.). Others, is everyone else including all Committeepersons. The Shop Chairperson is considered an Officer, as he is an Executive Board member. The Department of Labor requires us to separate the lost time this way and it is part of an annual report to the DOL.
You will also see Federal Taxes, FICA, MECA, PA Tax and Local tax in minus numbers. These are the taxes that are deducted from payroll or lost time checks but have not yet been forwarded to the various tax agencies. The next lines you see are Federal, State and Local taxes (the amounts are what was withheld from payroll and lost time the previous month) that have been forwarded to the appropriate place.
The next lines are the Per Capita Taxes paid. International Per Capita is 62% of the previous month's dues plus 39¢ per member or per dues to cover the GM Sub councils to which we belong. Per Capita to CAP Councils is 3% of the previous month's total dues (1.5% goes to local CAP and 1.5% goes to PA State CAP). Per Capita Taxes-Retiree Councils is 1¢ per dues amount that is forwarded to Region 9 for the Retiree Workers Chapter Fund. (Any time you want to know how many dues paying members we have in any given month, just look at this figure. If it is $4.85, that means we had 485 dues paying members that month). Membership paid to the Allegheny and Westmoreland County Labor Councils is listed as Per Capita Taxes-AFL-CIO, paid at 40¢ per member.
All of the per capita taxes added together equal about 66.5% or your dues. What that means is, if you pay $60 in dues, about $40 of that is redistributed for per capita taxes. Local 544 keeps $20. When you see $28,000 in dues income, we actually keep about $9,400. In most months, over 50% of our expense is for Per Capita Taxes.
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In the next report, I will explain the Fund Balances section and Allocation of Assets section of our monthly financial report.
Jeff Hall,
Financial Secretary
