Stewarding 9 Mobilization

Amara agrees to talk to her boss. Later in the week she calls you and reports:

“When I got to work yesterday I went to my boss and asked him if we could talk about the warning letter. He agreed and set a time in the afternoon. When I went to his office, he had another manager there with him. My boss was pushing me to admit that I was late and that I had been given the attendance policy. They didn’t seem interested in my side of the story. I tried to explain that I had to make arrangements for my daughter and then rushed out the door to get to work. At the end they said they would consider what to do but said that they hoped I wouldn’t be tardy again as that would lead to further discipline.”

What result did you expect? Have you had similar experiences with different outcomes? Please share. Type 'no' if you don't want to add anything.

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You call human resources and they agree to setup a meeting to discuss the issue. They hadn’t heard about the issue and ask you some details. They ask the name of the employee and the boss and the department they work in. They also want to know the basics of the issue. You tell them it a warning letter for tardiness. They ask you why she was late to work.

They want to have a meeting tomorrow but you can’t because you have the day off. You tell them that won’t work and it will have to be next week. They agree and you set a meeting. You let Amara know.

How would you respond to HR asking why Amara was late?

A couple other important considerations:

(1) If you give HR the reasons that Amara was late, they will start trying to have a conversation with you about her work behind her back. That puts you in awkward position and takes away from her agency, the goals of HR! You can answer: “We’ll discuss at the meeting.”

(2) Are you tracking the deadline to file a grievance? If the meeting ends up being after the grievance deadline, you won’t be able to file a grievance. HR likely won’t give you a pass on this.

(3) You will need to setup a meeting with Amara prior to the meeting with HR to get ready. We’ll go into the details for that later in this training.

When you call Amara she responds, “Thanks, that day for the meeting should work. It has been quiet at work. My boss hasn’t said anything else about the warning letter.”

You let her know the time and place of the meeting and set up a time for a prep meeting.

The next section of this training will introduce you how to prepare and conduct meetings with management.

Have you had different experiences with this initial part of the grievance process? Do the responses from HR and Amara seems realistic?

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Filing a grievance right away is usually a good idea. You don’t have to worry about missing a deadline. It let’s the boss know you are serious about challenging the workplace issue and takes it out his hands. You can always agree to put the processing of a grievance in abeyance (on hold) while you discuss the issue. These steps are not complicated.

The process for filing grievances varies by workplace and union but there are general steps and considerations we can discuss and we’ll show some examples to show how it works.

The person with the issue can do a first draft of the grievance form. Give them control and agency of their worklife. If you do all the work for them, you become the third party or legal representative and they lose agency. The person involved asserts ownership and responsibility by doing the work.

Filling out a grievance form

The form will probably ask four different kinds of information:

(1) Identifing information:

The name of the affected individuals and their contact information (if it is a big group of people, you don’t have to provide everyone’s contact information), job classification/title.

Workplace information such as department, office, work hours/shift.

Union steward (representative) and permission to have them be part of the process.

(2) Articles of the contract or personnel policy violated:

Fill in every article that you can reasonably argue was violated. You won’t be able to add more articles after the grievance deadline. You can always drop articles later if it turns out they don’t apply.

(3) Details of the violation:

You need to provide information why the action, in this case the warning letter, violated the contract. You don’t need to provide every bit of evidence and every possible argument but you do need to provide a connection between the action you are challenging and the contract articles you claim were violated.

(4) Remedy or solution you want:

You want to demand the removal or reversal of any disciplinary action and any other negative actions taken by the boss/employer. Include the language at the begining of your demand to “Be made whole in every way, including but not limited to …”

Let’s practice filling out a grievance form with Amara.

You can give her a copy of the contract before hand so she can look through it and identify articles that she wants to include. You can provided her with the grievance form so she can start to fill it out.

Here are links to the documents that you might need:

Warning letter

Contract

Attendance policy

Grievance Form

Grievant's NameName of Grievant's SupervisorGrievant's Email AddressDepartment/DivisionUnion Steward NameUnion Steward Phone NumberDate of Action Being GrievedContract Articles ViolatedViolation of AgreementRemedy Requested

Here is a draft of the article, violation and remedy sections of the grievance for you to compare to what you wrote:

Contract Articles Violated:

Discipline: Article 5

Sick Leave: Article 22E

Non-Discrimination: Article 2A

Violation of Agreement:

The warning letter of September 25, 2025 violated the corrective action article of the contract because there was no just cause for the discipline. While there is an official start time of 8AM, in daily practice there is no fixed time that employees arrive and as long as they arrive with enough time to prepare for opening there has never been any discipline issued, discussion in department meetings, or individual counseling to instruct us otherwise.

This warning letter is a violation of the sick leave policy which allows employees to utilize sick leave to take care of dependents. The reason Amara was late on the August 14, 2025 was due to her daughter being sick and needed a caregiver.

This warning letter is discriminatory because the attendence policy has only been applied to the only black woman in the department.

Remedy Requested:

Made whole in every way including but not limited to rescinding and removing warning letter.

Can you think of any other articles or violations? What do you think about the above draft? Type 'no' if you have nothing to add.

Finishing and Submitting the Grievance

Have Amara review the grievance. Have her look over the contract articles. Ask if she has anything else to add. She will probably need to sign and date it.

Make sure to submit the deadline within the deadline (most are 30 days but check to make sure). Management will almost never extend this deadline or make exceptions, so don’t miss it.

Submit the grievance according to the local procedure. This will be labor relations/human resources or to the supervisor. In some workplaces, individuals can submit their grievances directly and others, they will be submited by the union. Check the contract and with the union.

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Management wants to make discipline issues about an individual who then has to defend themselves in a legal process. This isolates the worker and puts pressure on them, in a sense already punishing them, even if they didn’t do anything improper.

Bringing a workplace issue to co-workers changes the entire setting. Now we can discuss how management behaves and has taken unreasonable actions. When we take action collectively, the worker with the issue will not be isolated and will have support of their co-workers.

The decision on when to bring in co-workers depends on the situation. In the case where a boss has been regularly harassing employees and a clear record of anti-worker behavior, jumping directly to discussing with co-workers and planning collective action makes sense. If you don’t know how much the boss is committed to following through on the discipline or if the co-workers still have a generally good opinion of the boss, it might be worth trying to go through the first step of the grievance procedure before escalating. That makes it easier for the boss to back down.

You suggest to Amara that we should talk to some co-workers and see what they think and if they will support her. Amara reluctantly agrees. She arranges for 3 co-workers to have coffee with her across the streat from work on their lunch break. How would you suggest to arrange the discussion?

Draft a brief agenda or list of topics for the discussion.What would you want to achieve? What do you want from the co-workers?If the co-workers were willing to take some action, what suggestions could they consider?

Here are some possible solidarity actions Amara and her co-workers could take:

(1) A petition to the boss supporting Amara.

(2) Having everyone wear an “I ‘heart’ Amara” pin.

(3) Walk in together 5 minutes late, perhaps after sharing coffee and snacks in the parking lot.

(4) Put table tents or a stricker up in our workplaces saying “Amara and her daughter are awesome.”

Would you pursue any of these? Any other action ideas? Answer 'no' if you don't have any. (Spark Union will preparing a mobilizing training module to go into this kind of action more in depth.)

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Awesome that you are ready to think outside the box. Let's hear your suggestions for Amara. We may add them to this training!

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