A large Taft-Hartley Benefit Fund sought a method to aid in the reconciliation of employer payments remitted for the hours worked by the Funds’ participants. Many employers were under-reporting employee hours, necessitating costly and lengthy audits to be undertaken by the Fund. During the audit process, it was discovered that not only were there significant underpayments, but use of non-union workers as well.

The SDC project kick-off began with an initial study phase. SDC studied electronic remittance history and gathered all paper reporting as well. The reports and the electronic history files, included remittance reports documenting employer’s detailing of employee hours worked (submitted either via paper reports or a web-based entry process).  In addition, and on behalf of the Fund, SDC worked with the Union to study shop steward field reports documenting hours worked for each member. These are paper reports filled in by hand, and are sometimes barely legible due to adverse conditions that exist in the field. 

In order to move the implementation of a new and effective system forward, SDC working with the Union, re-designed shop steward report forms to permit data capture via electronic scan routines. SDC undertook the deployment of optical recognition technologies to further aid the process. The new system would allow for difficult to read field entries to be handled by digital intelligent character recognition. This new reporting mechanism represented an effective digital entry point to be coordinated with the Fund’s benefits processing system. Shop steward training sessions were held, as the new initiative was soon nearing completion.

Once the shop steward reporting data is collected, through the utilization of a custom application, a computer comparison is performed noting any discrepancies between the hours reported by the employer during their remittance process, and the hours (verified work hours) reported on the shop steward report. Any discrepancies are presented in a specialized report for analysis by the Fund’s administrators.  After review of the discrepancies, letters may then be generated to the culpable employers asking the employer to either justify the discrepancy or remit the (now documented and verified) contribution shortage.

This process aided the Fund in recovering millions of under-reported dollars in a matter of months.

SDC's Specialized Capture Process:

Shop Steward submits completed shop steward weekly reports (SSR) documenting members daily work hours and sign off.

SSRs are sent to Union office for review.

SSRs are scanned to image.

SSR images processed through Intelligent Character Recognition software (ICR) for data extraction.

Questionable information is verified and corrected by administration staff, if appropriate.

Member number and worksite identification information is compared and validated to Union records.

Data is compared to Employer Remittance data at the Fund Level:

• Union member ID
• Employer ID
• Work Period
• Hours Reported

Discrepancies are reported and reviewed

Where appropriate, letter and discrepancy report are printer and sent Employers for resolution and payment of under-reported hours (copy of SSR image will be sent upon request)

The advantages of this process for the employers are:

• The ability to keep records accurately reconciled, and in a timely manner.
• Reduce or eliminate delinquencies including delinquent interest assessments.
• Resolve possible incorrect reporting due to inaccurate Member ID's.

The advantages to the Fund:

• Recovery of potentially high dollar volume of under reported contributions.
• Continuous monthly electronic audit of inaccurately reported hours.
• Reduction of frequency and cost regarding external audits.
• Reduced paperwork
• Discovery of potential corruption/fraud
• Monitor usage of non-union workers.