Stewarding 13 Prep for Management Meeting

Make sure you have the whole picture

Review your notes before the meeting. Re-read the contract. Go over what the other workers in the department said.

Here is an example of what the summary could look like:

Amara Grievance Notes

Received warning letter: 2/2/26

Accused of being 22 minutes late on one occasion.

Human resources and Amara both suggest that she may have been late other times but there is no documentation.

It is unclear how strictly the attendance policy has been enforced. As far as we know, no one else has been disciplined. No department meetings or memos have been recently issued emphasizing the attendance policy. The policy has a 15 minute grace period so Amara only missed that by 7 minutes.

Amara was late because she had to find care for a sick child. Would management rather have her call in sick? Management knows about her daughter's chronic illness. She found care for her daughter and showed up to work.

Amara has had positive work evaluations and never had any other discipline. She works well with her co-workers.

A warning letter is unnecessarily punitive and disproportionate to what occurred.

Review your summary with Amara when you meet with her. Invite her to correct or add to your summary. Make sure to listen carefully to her responses so that you understand all the details from her perspective.

Ask Amara to reiterate what outcome she wants.

The grievance procedure in union contracts almost always limits the remedy to "making whole" which in this case would mean rescinding the warning letter.

Amara's requests that her supervisor be better trained may well be reasonable and beneficial for her, her co-workers and the workplace in general but she'll have to achieve that through mobilizing action.

You can make suggestions for supervisor training in the meeting with management and couch them in the context that management did not have a consistent practice for enforcing or announcing the attendance policy.

Finally, you need to discuss the logistics and process of the meeting so that Amara knows what to expect and what role she should play.

Here are some points you can raise:

(1) Who will attend the meeting: Probably a human resources person and the supervisor. Perhaps additional management folks. What do you think about bring along a co-worker of Amara as a steward trainee?

(2) Where will the meeting take place: Describe the location and setting of the room so that Amara knows what to expect.

(3) Who does the talking and when: Generally the steward will do most of the talking. You want to get the opportunity to question the manager and want to avoid letting human resources interrogate or pressure Amara. Let Amara know that she can pass you notes or you can step out of the meeting at any time to discuss what is happening in the meeting (sometimes called a caucus). This may become important if management brings up issues you were not aware of or if management suggests solutions and you want to check in with Amara what she thinks about them.

(4) Ask Amara to take careful notes of what everyone says. It will be difficult for you to take notes and speak at the same time. This also keeps Amara engage.

(5) Set up time and place to meet with Amara so you can arrive at the meeting together.