Stewarding 4 Amara Issue

Stewarding Section 1: Intake

Part 2: Amara’s Issue

Now that you have experienced presenting your own issue, you will practice identifying the key components of an issue from an imaginary co-worker.

You get an email from a co-worker that they are having problems with their supervisor. You both work at a social service agency in a big city. About 100 people work in your agency. The individual who contacts you works in another department. You don’t know them well and don’t know much about their department. You setup a phone call with them after work to talk about it. Here is what they tell you:

“My boss is harassing me. When I came in a bit late yesterday, I got pulled into his office and he gave me a warning. Other people in the office regularly show up late and never have any negative consequences. I think he has something against me. Maybe he is trying to push me out so he can promote one of his friends.”

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. – Step 1 of 2

Instructions:

You must answer all questions. If you don’t have an answer to a question you can type ‘no’. As you answer questions, you will see boxes to check when you are done. When you check the box, the next questions will appear up.

Here are some questions that we would want to ask Amara:

(1) How long have you worked at this job? Are you still on probation? Are you a full-time employee? Are you an hourly employee? Do you get overtime?

(2) Can you give me some details? How late were you? What were the circumstances?

(3) Did your boss give you anything in writing?

(4) Has this happened before? Has your boss ever spoken to you about this in the past?

(5) Are others late at times without consequences?

(6) You mentioned your boss is picking on you? Why do you think he is targeting you in particular?

(7) Do your co-workers know about your boss giving you a hard time about being late? What do they think? What do they think of the boss in general?

We will go through these questions one by one with Amara. We will figure out what is important in her answers. Pay close attention because some times small details can be important.

Question 1: How long have you worked at this job? Are you still on probation? Are you a full-time employee? Are you hourly?

Amara: “I have been at the welfare agency for 4 years. I have switched departments a couple times and have been in this group for about 9 months. I’m not sure about probation but I think it is supposed to be 6 months. And ‘yes,’ I do work full time. I think I am hourly. I do get overtime if I have to stay late or come in on the weekend.”

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Here are some considerations:

(1) If Amara was on probation, management could probably let her go without reason. This makes her more vulnerable and you might want to tread lightly with any response until she is off probation.

(2) If Amara is a part-time or contract employee, she may be “at-will” and subject to dismissal without recourse.

(3) Amara thinks she is an hourly employee. This means she gets paid by the hour. If she gets paid for 8 hours a day and shows up 30 minutes late, does she get that time deducted from her pay, does she stay late to make up the time?

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Question 2: Can you give me some details? How late were you? What were the circumstances?

Amara: “I was about 20 minutes late. My 6 year old daughter was sick and couldn’t go to school. I had to wait for my mother-in-law to come over to watch her before I could leave to work. My daughter has some bad allergies since the house flooded during the massive storms last year.”

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Here are some considerations given Amara’s answer:

(1) Did Amara call into work that she would be late?

(2) Could Amara have called in sick to take care of her daughter?

(3) Is FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) an option? It could be paid or unpaid depending on the circumstances.

(4) Has Amara informed her boss or employer of the chronic illness of her daughter?

(5) What kind of public assistance can we point Amara to for remediation of the damage to her house by a storm? Can she be helped to move to a location healthier for her daughter?

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Question 3: Did your boss give you anything in writing?

Amara: “Yes, he gave me a warning letter. I loaded it up on a google drive. Here is a link for it.”

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Here are some possible questions about the letter.

(1) What tasks did her colleagues have to do for Amara, if any?

(2) Should the boss have asked about the need for accommodations before giving a written warning?

(3) How does the boss know it was exactly 21 minutes? You could have gone to the restroom when you walked in.

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Question 4: Your boss is writing you up for being late one time, that seems excessive. Will he claim this has happened more frequently?Will your boss saying you have a track record of being tardy?

Amara: “Yeah, I have been late a couple times before. My daughter does periodically get sick and sometimes the traffic is just impossible. My previous boss never gave me a hard time about this before. The new boss hasn’t said anything either, I’m not even sure if I’ve been late since he moved to our department. Up to now he has said he likes my work.”

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Some thoughts about what to follow up on and what might be going on.

(1) Amara said she has been late a “couple times before.” Management may be tracking that. You can ask Amara, how she would respond if management brought up the other occasions she was late.

(2) Follow up with how many of the tardies were due to her daughter’s health issues and how many due to traffic or other circumstances. There may be various options for Amara depending on the reason.

(3) What is her commute like? Maybe if there is excessively bad traffic due to an accident or other reason (in California this could be a sig-alert), that can be a legitimate reason.

(4) How does management know when people show up to work? Does Amara think they track this? Can she try and find this out?

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Question 5: Are others late at times without consequences?

Amara: “I haven’t tracked it really closely but I do see some of my other co-workers come in 10 or 15 minutes late from time to time. As far as I can tell no one makes a big deal about it or even seems to notice. I haven’t heard the boss say anything about it. We are supposed to be at work 30 minutes before we open for the public, so it doesn’t impact our work much.”

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This might be an opportunity to see how Amara communicates with her co-workers and if there is some mutual support.

(1) Ask if she could give you specific examples of a co-worker who has been late and what happened.

(2) Has she spoken to her co-workers about when they were late and what happened as a result of that?

(3) What happens during the first 30 minutes of work?

(4) Has the boss said anything about tardiness at meetings?

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Question 6: You mentioned your boss is picking on you? Why do you think he is targeting you in particular?

Amara: “As I mentioned, I think his motivation is to promote a friend of his who works in another department. It is weird that everything is fine for years and then suddenly he starts giving me a hard time for being late once. I think he feels more comfortable working with white guys than Black women like me.”

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Amara’s supervisor might be treating her unfairly or differently than other workers. Here are some possible questions.

(1) Why do you think he wants to promote his friend? Do you know this friend?

(2) Have you seen your boss do this kind of manuever before where he tries to push someone out when they get in disfavor?

(3) Has your boss behaved in other ways towards you that indicate he is picking on you? Has his attitude toward you changed?

(4) Speak to other workers in the department and see what they think of the supervisor.

(5) What indications has your boss given that he is uncomfortable working with Black women? These could be subtle microaggressions.

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Question 7: Do your co-workers know about your boss giving you a hard time about being late? What do they think? What do they think of the boss in general?

Amara: “I have talked to a couple of my friends at work about it. They are sypathetic and echo my concerns about our boss but they don’t want to speak up about anything. I don’t think they have ever been late, at least not that they have mentioned to me. This topic hasn’t really come up.”

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Some thoughts to consider about Amara’s relationship with her co-workers

(1) Do you think her friends are just being nice to her and validating her concerns but perhaps don’t share the same animosity towards the boss.

(2) You could ask Amara to give you contact info for some of her co-workers so you can collect more information about how they see the boss and the work environment.

(3) Is Amara the only Black woman? Are there other people of color or women? Do they have different impressions and feeling about the workplace?

Congratulations, you have completed the initial intake.

The next page will give you a chance to review your answers (and change them if you like). You will need to take careful notes during your intake conversations. You will get a copy of all your answers emailed to you when you ‘submit’.

Remember the two important pieces of advice from discussing your own issue:

(1) Make sure you don’t miss a deadline to file a grievance or other kind of complaint.

(2) Emphasize to Amara that she should not meet with her boss or HR alone. She should definitely exercise her right to have a union steward (like you!) present.

In the next section we will consider what research you need to do and then figure out what actions Amara and you want to take to address this issue.

Finished

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