History in a Hat

The thrift store near my house has always functioned as a sort of sociological laboratory. Since this latest economic recession the place has been packed to the rafters with customers—during the previous boom period the parking lot was half empty; these days they double-park to get inside.

Most of the customers of this thrift store are poor. The remainder are folks like me, looking for interesting junk. Americans throw away a lot of perfectly good merchandise. There are practically new jackets, shirts and other clothes here, not to mention complete sets of dishes, television sets and beds. Come Christmas you will find entire families here searching for decorations and toys for their children. Most of these people have jobs of some sort—they just don’t make enough money to buy new goods.

Interestingly, many Europeans shop here. Scandinavians, Germans and the English are amazed at the things we consider used up. They bring home clothing mainly, and shoes if they can get them. No duty to be paid on used jackets, you know.

On my way out of the store my eye fell on the hat rack and then upon a cap whose emblem took me back many years in an instant. The cap’s front read “Local P-9 Austin MN.” Nobody who was a unionist during the eighties can forget that union local, or its long struggle to the death.

P-9’s unsanctioned strike was as much a blow against traditional unionism as it was against the employer, Hormel. The local soldiered bravely on through the long months, but was simply starved out in the end. The story of that strike is the story of organized labor during the Reagan years, a story of attack and struggle and defeat, though surely the P-9 story is its saddest chapter, sadder by far than even the tale of the PATCO air traffic controllers.

Its history has been written by many others. I recall sitting in graduate labor studies classes at Rutgers where P-9 strikers and their families appeared to tell their story. At that point they were nearing the end, and not so much expecting to win as to go down fighting. We put on a benefit night for them at a local tavern, donating the proceeds to what they called a strike fund, but which was really just gas money for them to make another stop along the underground railroad of friendly unions, to get a hearing, make their mark before the storm blew their candle out.

Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich called in the National Guard to protect the replacement workers who took the places of the P-9 strikers. With that the game effectively ended. The era of decent wages in meatpacking was gone. The industry learned many lessons: to relocate into states that were less friendly to unions; to hire recent immigrants, legal and otherwise, who were desperate for jobs and who feared the loss of work more than the loss of rights, dignity, fingers or even life.

And so I am now in possession of this bit of wearable history. The cap is a bit worn and it smells of honest sweat. I will keep it to remind myself of that struggle. Has it really been twenty-five years?

http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/85hormelp9.html

Michael McGrorty

Kim Bobo: Wage Theft in America

My colleague Kim Bobo has written a book about our common line of work. Entitled Wage Theft in America, the book reveals the scope and impact of illegal wage cheating that goes on all around us, most of it undetected and unaddressed. Ms. Bobo doesn’t know that we share a trade, and I’m sure she wishes as I do that we could be doing something else for a living.

Yet here we are, having spent much of our lives trying hold back a river of wage stealing with a bucket and sponge. Ms. Bobo runs an organization called Interfaith Worker Justice, which has been active in the field for years. I have worked for the U.S. Department of Labor, and for various unions or labor/management organizations in the construction trades since 1988. Over that span of time I have interviewed thousands of workers, filed just as many claims with state and federal agencies, and occasionally—when the stars aligned—brought a few workers the wages they were supposed to have been paid in the first place.

Bobo’s book is hard reading even for somebody jaded by this work. Even so, Wage Theft is a strong reminder that there are good people out there who believe in the law and in the right of working people to their own money. It is beyond sad that such things go on year after year; worse yet that our government considers the situation to be relatively unimportant: we send people to prison for embezzling $5,000 from a bank, but when an employer steals millions from workers by denying them overtime wages, we let him pay back a fraction of what’s owed and continue business as before.

If you don’t think wage theft is a serious problem, understand that I have been able to make a good living detecting it for years. Business is always good. Wage cheating is as rare as salt in the ocean.

Last week I filed a series of complaints against a construction contractor who seems to have some relationship problems with a couple dozen of his workers. He has systematically deprived them of overtime pay, forcing them to work Saturday without compensation as well as failing to pay for extra hours worked each day. This company gave its workers regular lectures about being “team players” and let them know the consequences of failing to make the team. While working on state and federally-funded projects, the company also misclassified skilled trades workers as laborers in order to pay them at lower rates.

Workers who complained about working for free were fired; others were promised their pay later (without overtime) or simply not paid at all. Workers who spoke to a union organizer about the overtime problem were also terminated. The company has a little policy about traveling workers: when they go from job to job in the middle of the day, the company doesn’t pay them for the hours. Neither is the firm real good about letting workers have a lunch or required bathroom breaks. It seems that they’ve also failed to pay taxes of any sort on the unreported hours. The firm’s apprenticeship program is a fraud and a scam. Many a hopeful lad has entered only to find himself untrained and unemployable at the end, used only for fetch-and-carry work.

A quick tally of the included offenses against state and federal laws turns up half a dozen distinct violations of the law. Some of these I’ve referred directly to enforcement agencies, others will be dealt with through my firm’s attorneys. If we are lucky—if the winds of enforcement blow our way and we manage to get a good accounting from all the agencies—some of the workers of this firm will get a portion of the wages they worked for. Undoubtedly many will not. Perhaps there will be some compensation for those unjustly terminated. That is the way of the law and of the current state of enforcement. If things go as they often do, cases will be fumbled or dropped outright, perhaps some statements confused—maybe the company will hire a high-priced attorney who will stonewall the government side—and I will have to hold one of those delightful meetings wherein I inform a crowd of unemployed workers that they aren’t going to get their wages. If you have never done that and want to see what it’s like I can take you to the next one. There will be a next one; if not with this case then with others.

If you want to know how corporate America treats its workers, you can go to the appendix of Bobo’s book and see how many billion-dollar firms cheated their people out of the minimum wage and 40-hour overtime. [After a scan of the columns the millions begin to dull the mind.] The firms in the listing (and these are only the ones made public) are companies we all deal with every day of our lives. If we found that State Farm Insurance or our local grocery store ripped us off for a hundred dollars, we’d be furious. State Farm was made to pay $135 million in back wages; Safeway, Albertsons and Ralph’s supermarkets paid their janitors over $22 million in back wages and it doesn’t raise an eyebrow. We have somehow come to think that wage cheating is just a clever business practice, something like the careful scheming that puts an asset in a more favorable tax category. If you lose the game you just write a check for the difference and move on. Nobody goes to prison—when was the last time you read of some corporate chieftain doing jail time for wage theft?

Kim Bobo’s prescription for change includes substantial alteration in the structure of government agencies and in the treatment of cases under the law. She is on the right track there, but the road to that utopia will be long and rough. I think the main benefit of this book comes in the form of a shift in terminology. Bobo refuses to speak the technical lingo of the law in describing the failure to pay wages. She calls it theft, robbery, stealing. Which it undoubtedly is to the millions of affected workers. The adoption of those designations will be a substantial move away from the current complacency and toward the better world that Bobo wants all of us to live in.

This book is unpleasant reading because it is the unvarnished truth. Buy a copy and be thankful there are such in the world as Kim Bobo.

Michael McGrorty

Cash for American Workers, Not for the UAW

Here's something from the New York Times about the Cash for Clunkers program. Note that of the top ten new cars bought, five were manufactured in the U.S. and seven of ten in North America. Almost all the manufacturers were Japanese or Korean, but their workers were here. These workers were not UAW except for workers who produced the Ford Escape and the Toyota Corolla. Practically all the workers who produced the top ten traded-in cars were UAW.

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The Transportation Department revealed that the Ford Explorer topped the list of most traded-in clunkers, while the Toyota Corolla was the most popular car purchased through the program, followed by the Honda Civic. The top 10 traded-in vehicles were American brands and 8 of the top 10 purchased vehicles were foreign brands.

Here are the full lists:

Top 10 New Vehicles Purchased [I've added place of actual production]

1. Toyota Corolla (Fremont, California)
2. Honda Civic (Ohio and Canada)
3. Toyota Camry (Kentucky, Indiana)
4. Ford Focus (Hermosillo, Mexico)
5. Hyundai Elantra (Korea)
6. Nissan Versa (Mexico)
7. Toyota Prius (Japan)
8. Honda Accord (Ohio)
9. Honda Fit (Japan, Indonesia)
10. Ford Escape FWD (Missouri)

Top 10 Trade-in Vehicles

1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Ford Explorer 2WD
5. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD
6. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
9. Ford F150 Pickup 4WD
10. Ford Windstar FWD Van

end of article
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What this shows is that America's workers are making desirable cars, though the American car manufacturers are behind the curve, as they were during the gas crisis of the seventies. And that the future of the UAW, already bleak, is looking grimmer with each new car purchase. The union, saddled with a tremendous burden of retired members and their benefits, finds itself today with more history than future unless it can force a happier conclusion on this set of marketplace facts.

Michael McGrorty

EFCA

Over the past few months a few friends have asked me what I thought about the Employee Free Choice Act, now wending its way through the Congress. These friends are people I’ve known for many years, most of them involved, like me, in some aspect of the labor movement. Most of the time I try to keep my answer to a few generalities about the process rather than any prediction of outcome or analysis of the bill—this last being the most difficult thing because I am by nature and employment an analyst of labor matters. Silence is harder than comment.

Another difficulty is that labor people, though a particularly discursive lot, are not in the way of suffering apostasy—and they draw the line quite close to prevailing doctrine. Such doctrines as exist tend to emanate from the leadership of unions and from larger organizations like the AFL-CIO.

The current stance on the Employee Free Choice Act, held by practically all the unions in the country, is that the Act would make organizing a much quicker and fairer process. The bill’s authors claim is that workers who have tried to organize have failed because of the unconscionable delaying tactics and anti-union animus of employers.

I don’t think that EFCA in its present state will ever see a President’s signature. And I think that if it did pass, that it would not have nearly the effect claimed by its supporters. Simply put, the difficulty in organizing private firms won’t be greatly eased by any provision in the current legislation.

What I do think is that EFCA is a rather poor piece of legislation thrown at a problem whose essence is really the inability of private-sector unions to win over workers—even and perhaps especially workers in the sort of industries wherein unions used to prevail.

What labor wants to achieve through EFCA is a reversal of fate through a transformation of process. Labor spokesmen will tell you that what they are after is simply the effect that followed the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. EFCA would require the substitution of card check approval for the present scheme and schedule of elections, thus eliminating the long spell of time during which employers have communicated their own version of events, which messages often enough include promises to cease operations or move the facility. Unionists consider these to be unfair threats; companies consider them the exercise of free speech. What both sides agree upon is that the tactic has been remarkably effective, especially when organized by outside firms specializing in these affairs.

And the reason that the company message has been so effective is that it has the ring, or perhaps the stink, of truth: private firms do close and certainly do move overseas because of union organizing. And they also take other measures, such as cutting hours to eliminate full-time employees and their more costly benefits.

In any organizing campaign the worker hears three messages: that of the union, that of the company, and the voice of common sense, that song of experience and hard-won knowledge. An organizer’s traditional burden has always been overcoming the employer’s claims. In the past, the voice of common sense told workers that a union shop was preferable to the alternative, making the argument two-against-one in favor of the union from the start. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Though every poll shows that workers believe unions to be a good thing, when push comes to secret ballot, many vote the other way. Unionists insult the intelligence of their prospective members by suggesting that the company has frightened the bargaining unit with false claims. The truth is, those who vote against a union are generally pretty well informed about the state and nature of employment conditions and outcomes in America. Nobody in the HR department has to tell them that they are fortunate to have jobs, especially jobs with decent benefits, and nobody has to warn them that all of this can disappear in the wink of an eye. When management puts out bad vibes about moving or closing shop it is only adding volume to the warning voice of common sense.

The present generation of unionists seems shocked at this sort of thing, as though they didn’t realize that a deal their forefathers cut with Capital a long time ago ensured a constant struggle with an enterprising foe. The advantage in the long run goes to the private firms, which can shift shape, combine, and when necessary, vanish. They own both the plant and the job. Workers possess only their own labor, an article whose current value is measured in world markets against all comers. That much any worker knows, and he balances that knowledge against the argument of the union organizer.

Most of the 20th Century success of trade unionism came about because enough elements of a scheme found acceptable to the Congress and the representatives of labor at the time of the Great Depression survived attack to remain in operation for a couple of decades after passage of the law. That, as they say, was yesterday. Today’s worker needs a job more than he wishes a union, and he feels it is unlikely he can have both. The unionists have thrown EFCA at the problem, a bill that does nothing to silence the harsh song of common sense, and which has no remedy for its causes.

Michael McGrorty

Union Rep Toolbox

Not long ago a novice union representative asked me if I knew of anything he might study in order to do a better job representing the membership of his local. After asking the question he sort of settled into his seat as though he were expecting a long lecture. Instead I said what I always say:

“Learn to type.”

When I was in junior high school my aunt delivered a stern lecture to me about responsibility. She did this every time one of my report cards came through in the mail. She took it upon herself to correct my academic and personal shortcomings, addressing the two in a single diatribe to save time.

I believe I’d received a ‘D’ grade in math. Somehow this led to the demand that I learn to type. My aunt was a typist by profession; everything led to or from the typewriter in her universe. And so it was that I took a typing course the summer before high school. I’d promised after all, and there was no way of getting out of it.

And I promptly flunked the class. The reason I got an ‘F’ was because mine was the only typewriter in the room that had letters on the keys. I never got over the habit of looking down to find the right key, which slowed my typing rate down below the passing level. Besides, it was summer and there were a lot of girls in the room wearing shorts. The girls looked a lot better than the bail of a manual typewriter.

My aunt did not receive the news about my typing failure well. You’d have thought I’d murdered the Lindbergh baby. She made me promise to take another typing class. I promised and was not sorry. The typing classes in high school were almost entirely attended by girls. Unfortunately my teacher was a sour old gent who insisted that I actually learn the typewriter keyboard, and moreover, type text without error. I got a respectable grade in that course and in the one following. By the time I graduated I could make a manual Royal sound like a machine gun.

Knowing how to type got me a clerk’s job in the navy, which is to say that it kept me out of the engine room and scullery. Typing of course makes college work much easier. When the computer went from a toy to a tool I was ready.

The problem is, many of the business agents I’ve known aren’t ready for the nineteenth century, much less this one. You can find them at their desks, hunting for a letter that has migrated from its remembered place rather than finishing off the work they have to do. And union reps have a lot of work that requires typing skill. The ones who can’t or won’t type will try to push the work off onto a clerk or secretary, but that’s just a delaying tactic and it won’t wash.
Nowadays nearly everything of significance in the labor movement has some connection with the computer. The computer is practically useless unless its operator can send commands via the keyboard. Strange how so many union reps, who hail from the ranks of machinists, mechanics and other operatives, head into a job without being able to utilize its most important tool. The result is that they can’t function as true journeymen.

Even stranger is that typing is seldom listed as a job requirement for union representatives. It may take another generation before the skill becomes universal among that bunch. I expect the last holdouts to be among the gentlemen of the building trades, those experts with hand tools.

Michael McGrorty

Grievance Preparation

One of the problems that union stewards face is that most cases are open and shut. And of course that most of the disciplinary grievants have put themselves into situations that can’t be helped. The union representative may be forgiven if he occasionally wishes he could deliver a blow to the head of every member who whimpers about being docked for attending the third funeral of the same grandmother.

My old friend Pete used to deal with this problem in a way that will help to illustrate the steps of the grievance process and the options available therein.

Many a time I sat in the desk behind Pete and watched how he handled grievances. Pete got around the plant a lot and usually knew what was going on before anybody came around to see him. Our agreement had a three-step grievance process. Step One involved interviewing the affected employees and filling out a form to be sent to management via the HR department. The form called for a description of the alleged violation and the correction sought. At the first step the resolutions possible were to cease the practice, adhere to the conditions of the agreement and make employee(s) whole for the losses incurred. The steward had only to jot down a few particulars and check some boxes, obtain a signature and turn in the form.

The second step procedure was a bit more complex, calling for more details, higher level signatures and the record of what had been discussed and decided at the first-step proceeding.
The third step included a request for information from the company, meaning records of previous discipline for the grievant and perhaps others, and quite a bit of other stuff; this was because the third step was reached only when the parties could not come to agreement over the matter and the item was intended for arbitration under the terms of the agreement.
As we have seen, Pete was a very poor writer. This being true, he tried to avoid doing paperwork at all if possible, and managed to achieve this goal in most cases. He did this by disposing of grievances at the first step—and in his own unique fashion.

Let’s say you the company docked you an hour’s pay because you didn’t clock out for lunch. And let’s also say that the actual circumstances were that your supervisor told you to pick up some parts at a vendor’s shop, which prevented you from clocking out. Definitely a legitimate subject and issue for a grievance by the employee. Pete would have heard your complaint, scribbled a few doodles on the first-step form and then told you, “I’ll look into this.” ‘Looking into this’ consisted of having a very brief chat, usually by phone, with the supervisor of the affected area, and then informing the grievant that the matter had reached the end of its course.

Pete knew that the only obligation he had was to pursue the matter to the end of the first step. And so that’s exactly what he would do. If the company didn’t give in at that point—and they almost never did—he would just fold his hand and leave the table.

The reason he usually quit then and there was because he wasn’t prepared to go further. Part of the reason for this was that Pete had avoided attending the union’s grievance preparation meetings, which all stewards were encouraged to attend. The classes went step-by-step through the process, but they were held on a Sunday morning before the monthly general meeting, and Pete declined to rouse himself that early. These classes were offered by the union, which would bring its labor counsel down to show how the process was supposed to work. I sat in on some of those sessions and the lawyer did a good job of explaining the steps and procedures.

But it was only after I’d had a good deal of experience in other fields before I found my own way to go about the grievance process.

Working as a probation officer, I discovered that the entire system was geared toward getting probationers off the books—either by releasing them at the first moment after they’d satisfied the requirements of the court, or by sending them to jail for refusal to comply. In either case the court required considerable documentation.

Working as an investigator for the Department of Labor, I discovered the same system in place: every activity was structured on the assumption that the whole matter might go before a federal judge, even though the proportion of cases that actually did so was small. In sum, the investigator put together evidence for a prosecution from the start; if the violator gave in early and paid the back wages, so much the better.

Both experiences got me to thinking about grievance handling. The nature of the process is that it follows the path of progressive discipline which is common to both union and nonunion workplaces; in either case the design intends to provide due process rights to all concerned, as well as a method for correction of behavior to avoid further difficulty.

The customary grievance process calls for an increasing amount of information and documentation as the matter proceeds from initial contact through the first and subsequent steps. As the distance from the underlying events increases, the requirements of form and content also increase. The difficulty with this situation is best understood in the humorous advice given by doctors to those seeking to live long lives: Choose your parents carefully.
Consider this in light of the perfunctory documentation of grievances which from their outset appear to merit no more effort than an initial conference. Occasionally such grievances will contain the seed of a larger issue, or undiscovered facts will later emerge to enlarge the scope and significance of the matter.

A sample situation:

A union construction work complains that his tools have been stolen from a job site. The tools, valued at several thousand dollars, were in a locked steel case that was removed by thieves.
The union business agent files a grievance based on the testimony of the member. The grievance states, “Worker wants company to reimburse $3,000 for loss of equipment and storage box per Section 3(a)1 of agreement.”

The grievance goes to step one, which consists of a meeting between the firm and the union agent. The company representative simply refuses to pay for the tools. The second step of the procedure is reached, and the grievance is submitted per the rules of the agreement. The company replies with a simple refusal, and the file goes back to the union side.

At this point the union must decide to take the matter to arbitration or accept defeat. The union’s grievance committee at this point decides to go forward.

The arbitrator hears the parties and renders a decision in favor of management, reasoning as follows:

1. The union’s case essentially rested upon a provision of the contract which had not been in effect since expiring with the previous contract.

2. In place of the cited provision the parties had agreed to rely upon the language of the comprehensive national agreement which provided for reimbursement in cases of theft or other loss of tools or equipment upon the filing of a claim with the firm through the associated contractor association.

3. The worker in question had been offered compensation pending reimbursement but had turned down the offer, preferring to pursue the grievance.

In essence, the union had filed for arbitration of an issue based on a dead provision, while ignoring the possibility of filing a claim under the national agreement.

There are a number of problems with this grievance, but all of them could have been avoided if the union side had worked the grievance from the far end rather than the near.

The union had the obligation to cite the agreement correctly; management did not have the burden of correcting their misapprehension. They did so in their arbitration testimony, taking advantage of previous research as well as the understanding that the union side would not at that point be able to alter its original filing to encompass more appropriate contract provisions. In fact, the management side’s arbitration testimony was loaded with minutes from bargaining sessions in which the parties had agreed to replace the old loss compensation language with the national agreement’s provision.

Had the union foreseen the refusal of management to concede in the early stages, it might have done the research necessary to compose a successful case. The labor side threw a weak first step grievance at their opponent, and sat on their hands waiting for a result. They didn’t plan further ahead than the second step. The union grievance committee worked to rubber-stamp the original paperwork without additional effort or research when this could have made a difference. Consider the result from the standpoint of the grievant, the least informed of all parties and the one with the most to lose. Next, think of this outcome as it affects the reputation of the union among all members. Not a pretty scene.

In grievances as in war, many battles are lost though poor preparation, though their details, viewed in hindsight, suggest an imbalance of forces. If every grievance were planned and prepared as though the business agent expected the matter to be examined by an arbitrator, the union side would win more often than it does. Perhaps the best product of careful planning is the decision not to pursue a grievance. Certainly the example above is one such case. The grievance process is like a gun: once fired it is impossible to recall the bullet and difficult to predict its final landing place.

Michael McGrorty

More Sparks

I worked for that factory three years and six months, long enough to graduate with a BA in labor studies, greatly supplemented by what I learned on the shop floor. I studied all the past grievances I could find, helped anybody who would have my assistance, and learned lessons both sweet and bitter about unionism at the cutting edge. I’ve still got a badge that says “Assistant Steward,” and many memories.

My initial understanding of the labor movement was shaped by two forces: the example of my parents and my own reading. I was raised in a union household by two activists who were also exemplary employees where they worked. My mother was very highly regarded in her trade and my father was a very respected teacher. Neither of them missed a day of work, arrived late or botched the job—nor had they any sympathy for those who did. At night, my father worked on union business or political campaigns aimed at electing a union-friendly candidate. I can’t tell you the number of times I walked precincts with the old man.

I was an early and avid reader. My childhood years were filled with the usual adventure books, but I also got a good dose of Upton Sinclair, Henry George, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez. Taken altogether what I knew of the labor movement came from the example of two upright practitioners and a library stocked with hagiography.

This view of the movement was bound to suffer in its collision with reality, and of course it did. I remember writing a paper about grievance handling for a college class wherein I discussed the nature of our firm’s grievances. I trust to memory that these figures are approximately correct.

Unexcused Absence/lateness: 85%

Insubordination/refusal to comply with direction: 10%

Violation of work or safety rules: 4%

All others: 1%

Allow me to sketch out a typical grievance situation for you. My example and mentor, the aforementioned Pete, would permit me to interview some person who was in the process of being disciplined for missing time. I would take notes, which generally came out like this:
“Subject, Mary Smith, to be given week off without pay for excessive absences. Firm claims that she missed eight workdays and parts of other days over past three months without excuse or permission. Records support allegation. Ms. Smith claims ‘I have not got any more sick time or vacation and have various situations with my kids that need taking care of.’ Such situations include doctor visits, et cetera. This is third proceeding, first two being met with standard verbal/written warnings.”

Anybody with experience in such matters could see that Mary hadn’t a leg to stand on. Absent error by the company, she would have to take her lumps.

Here’s another example: Joe Blank decides to show off in the company parking lot with his new car. Joe’s a young kid and likes to race, so he spins his ride around the lot every afternoon on the way home. On the third offense he gets canned. Hard to fight that termination, don’t you think? And equally hard to win a case when your client has been caught drinking liquor in the parking lot, stealing company tools or writing his name on the restroom ceiling with a cigarette lighter. The only good point to these cases is that they at least didn’t involve somebody arguing against the testimony of the time clock.

The point of this discussion is to underline the reality of union stewardship: that the grievant is usually guilty. Meaning in legal terms that the claimed violation has occurred at least to some degree, and that fighting the facts will not result in a positive resolution for the union side.
What does this mean for the union steward? It means that the steward is in the same position as another hard-working advocate.

I used to work as a probation officer. What that means is that I kept watch over 150 adult felons as they attempted to avoid prison. When they didn’t try hard enough I brought them to court. When they went to court they were represented by one of the public defenders, because most probationers haven’t the cash to afford a private lawyer. The public defender rarely saw a winnable case. The management side, which is to say, me, always had a good case against the probationer, consisting of records, statements and documents to the effect that he had broken all the rules that he promised to keep. The public defender’s job was usually divided into two parts: reviewing the situation to insure that the facts were straight, and then trying to cut the best deal possible under the circumstances.

Public defenders are very conscious of the fact that their clients are generally guilty. They look at their work as primarily defending the rights of the accused. No better description of the grievance work of a union representative could possibly be found. The only difference between the public defender and the union steward is a different set of laws. In the case of the steward, the law is the union agreement, perhaps supplemented by company rules, applicable employment laws, and precedent.

Understanding grievance representation in this light prevents the steward from the sort of burnout that comes of having to defend a stream of guilty parties. The first and most important consideration of any steward in a grievance is the maintenance of a strong procedural defense. This means giving the grievant his day in court and every advantage that the process permits. Our criminal justice system’s first consideration is to preserve the rights of the accused; the union grievance system is intended to work the same way. The best defense for any grievant begins with following the system to the letter. Don’t come to any premature conclusions regarding the nature of your client’s case. Make the company deal its cards; play each hand to the end, and double down if you have to.

If you practice this methodology you will be amply prepared when you get a zinger—one of those too-rare cases where the grievant is innocent of the charges, or where management has stepped beyond the boundaries of its authority. Consider these cases:

The company fires a man for attacking his wife in the unionized plant where they are both employees. The long-term employee loses his job, retirement and benefits at a stroke. Because of the charges he has no hope of gaining another position in a similar company. A pro-forma grievance is filed but there seems little chance of success.

The steward looks at the charges, accepts the grievance and, because a firing means a direct ascent to arbitration, waits for the case to come up on the calendar. When it does, he informs the arbitrator of certain facts omitted in the termination letter, to wit:

The man and his wife quarreled during lunch and returned to the plant together. She left their car at the end of the parking lot and walked to the building alone. She entered and went to her workplace. Unbeknownst to her, her husband followed behind. When he found that she had gone through a set of wired-glass doors, he pounded on the door to get the attention of the guard, but the guard was somewhere else. In anger, the man punched the door, making a large dent in the glass and cutting his own hand. The supposed victim never knew that she was supposedly being attacked, and the two never were in sight of each other. In fact the man had attacked only a door, if anything.

The arbitrator ruled that the company had made misstatements of fact and reinstated the employee, who accepted the accumulated time off without pay as punishment for his damage to the shop door glass.

Another case:

In the engine shop of a union factory, one of the assembly mechanics is transferred to another shop on the order of the shop’s supervisor. The worker files a grievance to contest the transfer, but the agreement permits management to unilaterally relocate workers within the same classification and skill level. The worker loses the grievance.

Within weeks of the first transfer, this mechanic is transferred again, to another location in the same plant. The work is identical according to the agreement’s specification, but quite different in operation, and the worker falls behind schedule. This results in the threat of discipline from the mechanic’s current supervisor. Clearly this fellow is at risk of losing his job.
The company is clearly in the right, but something doesn’t smell right about the situation. Interviews with other workers reveal the truth. The mechanic is an older man who has worked for the company a long time. His job consists of assembling small motors. Most of his workmates are younger people. There is a clash of cultures; he is old enough to be their father and he does not appreciate their tastes, music or pastimes. A conversation with the original supervisor reveals an nasty side to the case: the grievant is a Korean war veteran who was badly wounded in battle. He is missing some fingers, has a prosthetic leg, and his face is badly scarred as well. The supervisor feels that “The guy is just an ugly, cranky old cripple who ought to retire.” In other words, the grievant is simply not one of the in-crowd which includes the supervisors of the assembly areas. The contract permits the transfers, which are obviously intended to get the man to quit his job.

The steward confers with the grievant and gains his permission to contact a veteran’s organization on his behalf. Soon a polite letter of inquiry is received at the company’s main offices. The letter notes that the firm has many federal contracts which could be jeopardized by activity prejudicial to the interests of service veterans such as our grievant. Within hours the whole misunderstanding is resolved. The grievant has his slate wiped clean, an apology is tendered, and life goes on as before.

And yet another:

In a large unionized factory, the management decides that it has become too expensive to pay union workers to perform certain tasks. The contract requires that all employees in particular classifications be union members, and the firm decides to interpret this in the best way possible for themselves.

The company hires many new workers into existing hourly non-bargaining unit classifications and works these hires beyond the limits of the classifications, thus saving much in salary. In effect the firm is simply spreading non-union workers into union work. The union is faced with the option of filing many grievances, putting out fires one after another. The company hopes to fatigue the union into surrender, or perhaps win a big victory in an arbitration case.
Here is another case where the union agreement will provide no remedy, and the workings of the process will act as a punishment to the union side. The solution to this came about by accident. A union steward was approached by one of the non-bargaining unit workers who realized that she was performing the same work as union hands, but for less pay. This steward did some research and discovered that the company would permit any person who had a work dispute to be assisted in that dispute by a fellow worker. And so the steward began assisting non-union workers in filing complaints about working in union classifications for lower pay. A few dozen of these filings and the company backed off its plan.

M. M.