IUOE Local 139 represents operating engineers across Wisconsin and is one of the locals chartered by the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents operating engineers, nurses, healthcare workers, and petrochemical-industry employees across the United States and Canada.

A local with four regional offices placing operating engineers on jobs has a dispatch operation that needs to run at trade-pace. Staffing the right member to the right job, in the right order, with current skills and availability, is harder when membership data and dispatch data live in different systems. The four offices made the misalignment more expensive at every level.

To bring union member dispatch into one real-time system across all four offices, Local 139 turned to eMembership for an integrated Dispatch Module configured to its job-hall placement model.

Two systems across four regional offices

Before adopting eMembership, Local 139 used two old, separate systems to manage membership and dispatch. Keeping the systems up to date across four regional offices, and staffing jobs in one system with members from another, was incredibly difficult and time-consuming.

• Two old systems. Membership and dispatch ran on different software, each requiring its own maintenance and reconciliation.
• Four regional offices. Each office worked from its own view of the data, with no easy way to coordinate placements across the local.
• Inadvertent dispatching of suspended or blacklisted members. Without real-time visibility into member status, suspended or blacklisted members occasionally got dispatched anyway.
• Dispatch-collected info lost. Updated contact data collected during the dispatch process often did not make it back into the membership database.

The local needed union member dispatch and membership data in one system, accessible to all four regional offices in real time, with skills matching and member self-service to keep the data current.

One platform, four offices, real-time job hall

Winmill replaced both systems with eMembership, including the integrated Dispatch Module that supports proactive, job-hall style placement of members. All four regional offices now work from the same real-time data, and member self-service keeps skills current.

Skills and availability matching

The Dispatch Module matches member skills and availability to employer work orders. The skills list is configurable and can include skill assessments (for example, a 1-5 rating) where appropriate to the local's operating model.

Days-out-of-work prioritization

Members are prioritized by days out of work, supporting the local's job-hall placement order. The prioritization is built into the module rather than maintained by hand.

Full dispatch history

Every call made to a member is tracked, whether or not it resulted in a dispatch, alongside the history of actual member placements. The optional ability to blacklist members by employer is supported where required.

Member self-service for skills

Members use the eMembership Member Web Portal to maintain their own skills and certifications, which keeps the data feeding dispatch current and ensures the right people are matched to the right jobs.

A platform built for a real job hall

Beyond dispatch, Local 139 uses a range of integrated tools within eMembership:

• Work order-based member dispatch with configurable skills and optional skill levels
• Full history of member dispatches and full history of calls made per work order
• Optional blacklist tracking by employer where the local's operating model requires it
• Labor union app for members to manage availability and skills from their phones
• Union meetings and event management with attendance tracking
• Custom union administration reports for board, dispatch volume, and member engagement analysis

Streamlined dispatch, data that finally stays current

With eMembership, Local 139's entire dispatch process is dramatically streamlined, with all four regional offices working from the same real-time member and job data.

• No more inadvertent dispatching of suspended or blacklisted members. Real-time status visibility prevents the errors that the old two-system environment regularly produced.
• Four offices, one source of truth. All four regional offices have access to the same system, using the same real-time member and job data.
• Contact updates from dispatch land in the system of record. Updated address, email, or phone information collected during dispatch is immediately saved in eMembership.
• Members keep their own skills current. Member-driven skills updates through the member portal ensure dispatch is matching the right people to the right jobs.
• Audit-ready dispatch history. Every call and every placement is tracked, supporting both operational decisions and any compliance or grievance review.