PUT LIFE INTO YOUR CONTRACT

Your second main job is handling grievances. Without you and your fellow stewards, the best contract can be a dud. You give it life. You make it work. The smartest union officer cannot build the union alone. The most efficient union representative cannot make it run smoothly without your help.

Later we’ll discuss the whole procedure of grievance handling and establishing good relations with your supervisors. But there’s an important job related to this which is sometimes overlooked. Be on the lookout for bad conditions or situations that need remedying ad do something about them before they become serious grievances. That is, nip grievances in the bud! (These are bound to arise as long as we’re human beings without a private island for each of us.) Together you and the supervisor may be able to ease the situation and make for better understanding and cooperation among the workers involved.

By getting at these things before they become serious grievances you’re apt to get better results. Psychologically it’s easier to go to your supervisor and point out something that you can remedy together. It’s not a question then of who wins the grievance case, management or labor. Rather, the issue is cooperative effort resulting in better working conditions, greater job security, and fairer wages for the workers, and thus better production. Of course this same cooperative approach works in handling grievances, too!

If you can handle a situation outside the grievance procedure, do it. But do not horse trade or violate the contract.

KNOW YOUR CONTRACT

Your fellow workers don’t expect you to know everything, and they’ll respect you a lot more if you don’t try to bluff your way out of things. But they do expect you, as their leader, to be well informed. To educate workers so that they understand and cooperate with union policies, you must first educate yourself.

"Know your contract!" This is the first commandment for the stewards.

To know if the company and the union are living up to their agreement, you must know what’s in it. Unless you know what it says, you cannot tell a worker if he’s right about it. You certainly can’t discuss it intelligently with management.

Read over every word of it. Go over it at stewards’ meetings. Discuss it with union officers. Become familiar with the provisions. Understand how they apply to special conditions in your department.

Keep up-to-date with arbitration decisions and new interpretations of the different clauses. When you know your contract as well as you do the alphabet you can begin to shine as a steward.

Remember the union is not a slot machine where a worker puts in his dues and gets the jackpot in the form of higher pay, shorter hours, better lighting, longer vacations, it all takes work! But it’s worth it. As steward, you have to do a lot of the day-to day work. But if you are a good leader, you’ll get cooperation from your fellow workers and your union officials as well as from management and this helps make the job easier.

You will have headaches, but you will also get breaks. Stewardship gives valuable experience. From adjusting plant grievances you may come to represent labor in industry-wide conferences, policy-making conventions or even government agencies. The keystone of the local union may be the stepping stone to greater union leadership.