You finish a job, call the Work Availability number and then sit by the phone like a wallflower on a Friday night. What’s happening while you’re waiting for that call?

The Out of Work Call Log has eight workers and three columns/calls on each page. When there has been a lot of activity and the first few pages of the log have no columns left or are filled with names of workers who can’t be called because they’re on jobs, over 32 hours or have refused calls, we check the Work Availability messages. The messages are recorded in a hardbound book by the Business Agent and at least one other officer. The BA then takes those messages, combined with the jobs that are going on and the old Call Log and makes a new Out of Work Call Log. Depending on how many jobs have ended and how long each of those jobs was, making a new Log can take several hours.

Accurately calling in your hours after shorter jobs makes it go a little faster; otherwise, the BA has to stop and call you or look up the payroll from the job (that’s where the House Heads’ turning in their payrolls promptly helps, too.) The BA tries to have a fresh list on the wall for all General Meetings as well.

The new Out of Work Call Log is then faxed to the Dispatcher on duty. Only one Dispatcher is on duty at any given time. Usually, the Dispatchers only trade off at the beginning of a month, but work schedules and other factors can affect when Dispatchers trade off – that’s why we have a pager. Workers don’t need to keep track of who’s on duty and who’s not – just call the pager and your call will be returned.

Occasionally, the BA will help out with calls, particularly when unusual calls come in or when the dispatcher on pager is also working in the craft.

When calls come in from employers, the Business Agent reviews them and passes them on to the Dispatcher. 784 can’t control when calls come in, but we try to put calls out seven to ten days ahead of time. We also try to fill calls in the order that they will occur. Unfortunately some calls come in late and some calls are so close together that we can’t finish one before starting the next. We also don’t want to drive you crazy by calling twice a day – even though sometimes we do! We also want to fill calls before they go into “Emergency” status. A call is considered an Emergency if we cannot allow you the usual 24 hours to respond because we would have no time left to call the next worker – that’s why your calling back right away is so important. And of course there are emergency calls when the employer needs someone ten minutes ago. We get some calls for replacements with a couple hours’ notice, but we also get calls for someone ten minutes after the call starts because the attraction forgot to tell the employer. In those cases, the Dispatcher calls their way through the list asking whoever answers the phone if they are available and how fast they can get to the venue.

Hopefully, this answers a lot of questions about how calls are dispatched. If you have any further questions, please send them to the office.