COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Unions in the United States have concentrated on collective bargaining as a means of raising the standard of living of their members. The simple phrase, collective bargaining, covers a wide variety of subjects and involves hundreds of thousands of union members in the process.

Representatives of labor and management negotiate over wages, hours and working conditions. The settlement reached is reduced to writing. The written contract normally contains a grievance procedure to settle disputes. It is the job of the Steward to enforce the contract on behalf of the members.

It has not been easy to establish collective bargaining as a permanent part of American life. Historically, management took the position that because they owned the means of production they had the sole right to determine the conditions of employment.

Workers formed unions so that they could have some say over wages, hours, working conditions and the many other problems that arise in the relationship between a worker and an employer. The efforts of unions to establish the concept of collective bargaining are a little known but very important part of American history, involving great sacrifice and bitter struggle.

Collective bargaining forms the cornerstone of industrial democracy. The Steward is the symbol of industrial democracy at the work place. The Steward is the representative of the union who is available to the worker with a problem. The establishment of an effective Steward system means the individual worker has the right to respond through the union where unfair treatment or discrimination occurs.

DUTY OF FAIR REPRESENTATION

Most Stewards take their task very seriously, as well they should. They understand that they are their co-workers’ first line of defense against mistreatment by their employer and they understand the Steward’s responsibility, by law, to fairly represent bargaining unit workers to the best of their ability. But where some less experienced Stewards get tripped up is in their failure—well intended, to be sure, but still a failure—to draw a line between their responsibility to fairly represent aggrieved workers and their automatic, no questions asked representation of every worker who thinks he or she has a grievance.

The fact is the union does not have to file or pursue a grievance each and every time a bargaining unit member thinks it should. The Steward who does that is actually doing damage to himself, his co-workers and the union.

The law does require a union to equally and fairly represent all members of the bargaining unit. This means when making grievance decisions a union or Steward should not consider a bargaining unit members’ race, gender, nationality, age, religion, politics, unpopularity, union membership, or status as a dues paying member. But the simple act of deciding not to file or pursue a grievance does not mean there has been an automatic violation of the law’s ‘Duty of Fair Representation” (DFR) requirement.

A union or Steward does not have to file a grievance if they have a rational, good-faith belief that the grievance lacks merit. Nor does the union or Steward have to take ridiculous or impossible positions to argue for grievances that lack merit.

For sure there is nothing to stop a bargaining unit member from filing a charge with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that he or she was treated unfairly because the union failed to file a grievance. But to win a DFR case a member must prove not just that the union made a mistake, but that the mistake was due to personal hostility or political animosity. And it is not enough to show the union was negligent, inept or exercised poor judgment; such actions had to be the result of a personal effort or campaign to deny the bargaining unit member his or her rights. A union that breached its DFR duty in the case of a discharged bargaining unit member can be held for back pay.
In summary, the union should only file grievances based on merit and the greater good they will do for the bargaining unit members as a whole. This will also increase the credibility of the union officials with their management counterparts, which in turn will promote a productive labor-management relationship – which always benefits bargaining unit members.