Membership and benefits Processing at the Rockland Taxi Union

Rockland county in Long Island has an active taxi workforce of over 1500 taxi drivers and a very active taxi union. Any licensed taxi driver of Rockland county can become a member of the local taxi union - local 330. A driver can walk into the local office and after showing his taxi drivers commercial grade license (CGL) fill in a membership form and pay the required membership dues. A driver can also fill out a membership form online and schedule an appointment to come into the office for the credentials verification prpocess. Once a drivers CGL has been verified as valid through the County's municipal database, the member is issued a Membership ID card and a receipt for his her dues payment. dues received from embers are logged into the Revenues Fil. The driver can either beome a member for a whole year at a discounted rate or go for monthly membership. Further, with a whole years dues payments, the driver is issued a Rockland Union T Shirt. Last but not the least, if the driver can fill in a separate form to enable automatic deductions of dues from his checking account as part of this initial payment process.

All members current information is maintained and regular checks are done to ensure that the information is up to date. Every month postcards are sent out to all members with industry updates and all returned postcards result in a follow up call/email to the member to seek his/her new address. Similarly, Rockland Taxi Union staffer, Jean Dunnet, sets into motion an automated greeting to all members via their phone system (and software) that records all dud calls. All members whose phone numbers do not work receive an letter/email with a request for a new phone number which then is updated. In a few cases all forms of contact with a member fail. Such members are placed in a Suspended Communications Status.n

For all members who have not enabled automatic dues collection from their checking acciunts, a comprehensive dues follow up process happens each month. The Dues follow process begins with the system automaticallygenerating a Dues Reminder mailer to all members when their dues expire. Members can pay either online, or by check or bring in their dues in cash to the office. All monies that come in response are processed and records updated to indicate the members staus as a "member in good standing." All members who fail to respond to the first reminder are sent a second reminder - a Membership Red Alert - 21 days after the first mailer went out. F a member fails to respond, his/her record is automatically moved into a Lapsed Member Status.

When a member has a ticket/summons issued by the local police for a driving violation, he/she can again bring it into the office of the local. The benefits administrator logs the ticket, processes the requisite payment and forwards the ticket details electronically to the local law firm - Shimmer Inc. The payment for a ticket is determined by the number of different violations that the driver has been charged with, each violation attracting a different degree of complexity of law and potential fine. The law firm schedules a lawyer and goes to court for the member. Once the court decision is known the law firms informs the union office of the outcome or new dates received and the records are updated forthwith.

Finally, members often have a myriad of other problems such as injury on the job, insurance irregularities, disputes with the Taxi owners etc. Any member who comes into the office with such problems goes through an Advocacy Case Intake Process. Every morning the Advocacy cases from the previous day go to the unions staff attorney who determines if the case must be handled internally or ref3red to an external law firm that the Union has hired. If it is determined that the case is for referral the case file is scanned and sent to the law firm and an initial appointment for the member is setup with one of the firm's lawyers. If the case is to be handled internally, it is logged into the Advocacy database and necessary actions initiated.

Draw a top level data flow diagram.

Draw Level 1 for the membership Renewal Process and for Record Update process.