calculators

[green1]

great work! one thing to note though, many people (myself included) find it difficult to find their monthly gross earnings, being paid bi-weekly makes it an awkward calculation, how about an option to enter hourly wage and hours/week worked?
(ie, most TELUS people work a 37.5 hour week, and if they enter their hourly wage, it can calculate the rest)

beyond that, the numbers it pulls up seem about right for the TWU.

Also, on the strike pay calculator, there are a couple points:
first, it asks hourly wage, but not hours/week (does it assume 40? which isn't always the case?)
secondly, in it's calculation of lost income does it take in to account taxes? strike pay is tax free whereas regular earnings are taxed, this can make a big difference.

[grudey]

Here's one thing that always bugged me about the TWU. When we were part of the IBEW we paid dues on regular wages. In the TWU we pay on our regular wages AND our overtime. Does it cost more for a union to represent someone who works overtime? I don't think so. This is basically the TWU penalizing someone for working harder and longer to get ahead. Socialism at its best!

[NC]

I agree with you Green, it was just easier to use the monthly amount. I will work on getting everything to go from hourly wage. We had much debate about capped dues too. Should the user be able to overide a cap?

I think we are going to go with a standardized hourly wage and then the number of hours.

There is a "Pay Rate Calculator" that we made so you can work back to the monthly wage.

calculators/payconversions.html

How did my post get up here, it was made two days AFTER Green1... John Doe... I broke something again.

[green1]

something is definitely odd with this particular forum, it's in reverse order...

capped dues

is that a limit to how much you could pay in dues? now there's a concept the TWU would never allow!
the more OT I do, the more the union gets...

[NC]

This too odd, reading backwards.. I hope the whole site is not assbackwards like this.

Well.. the whole "cap" thing is a bit misleading. For instance, the Steelworkers have a cap, but they raised the dues and the language about the cap was pretty straight forward:

If a local union has a dues cap in place, 0.1 per cent needs to be added on to the cap as well.

This is the dues increase I have ranted about before, where members dues go from 1.3% to 1.4% and they market it as "Power in .1%" but it nets out to a 7.7% increase in what you pay in dues.

[JJ]

Now that is slick! good work nc and John Doe and anyone else that worked on that. you must be getting some pretty irate emails about that one.

really brings home how much money you could save by investing it instead of giving it to the union. the investment calculator thing is pretty accurate too.

[JohnDoe]

Uh, oops. I think I broke this. I just realized what you were talking about.

I think I can fix that. I think.

[JohnDoe]

All fixed.

[alec]

the calculator works well. However it should also have a section where you put in your postal code and the calcualtor gives you the address of the nearest medicentre so you can go and get a prescription for anti depressants.....(sigh)

[NC]

I am working on green1's idea about the bi-weekly and semi-monthly pay period thing. The guy I have doing it, while not charging me, does not work as fast as I would hope. Given the "free" thing I cannot complain.

now, if only I could find a way to make money from this I would be styling. I do have some other websites that want to use the thing but it's a bit rickety.

The big challenge will be keeping it up to date. I hope we get some feedback from people other than all the regulars (Not that we don't appreciate that), it's just that I can tell people are reading here and looking at the calculators but there is no dialogue.

I think people are just scared about signing up.

[NC]

We have taken down the Dues and Strike Pay calculators. They will reappear soon. We are working on a new site that will do lots of other cool stuff and we will let you know when that happens.

[NC]

This project is still in the works... I am not working much again but hopefully in June a larger project will resolve and i can get back at it. Sorry for the delay.