Grievance Handling

Graphs Help You See Trends

After a bit of time into a new contract cycle, you can begin to build a graphic representation of your grievances. A simple bar graph showing how many grievances have been filed on each issue (and the corresponding article in the contract) helps us visualize problem areas.

For example, if we average one or two grievances a month on overtime, over a year we should have between 12 and 24 grievances. The same should go for other issues. Some articles in the contract may not generate any grievances. This, too, is good to know. Evidently there are not any “trackable” problems in these areas.

Graphs can be reproduced and distributed prior to soliciting our members for proposals for negotiations. We always want more money and more time off, and you will always get these proposals. But what if we are having a significant problem with job bids, or overtime equalization, or some other area? Graphs will reveal these problem areas and we can solicit proposals that may solve the problems.

What if we find out that all of the overtime grievances are in one department or with one supervisor? Our grievance log not only helps us see the problem, but helps us demonstrate it to the company. The company won’t listen if we just say Ned Barnes is a pain in the neck; if we show them a graph of his grievances compared to other supervisors, they may pay attention.

Graphs also help us see trends. Variance from the trend can be indicative of a problem. Figure 2 shows our graph for grievances in two areas, overtime and job bids. Note that overtime grievances were twice as prevalent in years one and two of the contract as vacation scheduling grievances.

Suddenly, in year three, vacation scheduling grievances are up while overtime grievances are down. It's gotten to where you simply cannot take a vacation anymore.

Is this really a problem, or is the company creating a false problem because the contract is getting ready to expire? If they can create a false issue, then solve it in negotiations, they can distract you from the contract's overtime language, which is clearly not working for your members.

Your grievance log and the graphs it helps you create allow you to speak to the company in the kind of language they understand. For example, multiplying the average number of hours a steward spends on a grievance by the average wage tells you how much each grievance costs the company. You can then point out how expensive all those overtime grievances are becoming.

You can also determine how much those grievances are costing the local.

One thing you’re bound to discover if you do this analysis: Grievance logs can be a very helpful tool.