Good Records Help the Steward and the Local

Keeping grievance information well organized not only wins cases, it can help win good contracts

Imagine that you have three big, complicated grievance cases to be heard at step three of the procedure. You are walking down the hallway to meet with your local lodge officials, your International representative, the company human resource people, and the grievants.

You have done your research, and you are well prepared. For each case, you have 10 to 25 individual pieces of paper — documents, notes, letters, affidavits from eyewitnesses — which you are carrying in file folders.

Just as you are going in the door to the meeting, you drop all of your folders, mixing all of the papers for all three cases together on the floor. You bend down to pick them up and realize that the only way you can tell which case a document belongs to is to read it.

And suddenly it hits you: Straightening up this mess would be so much easier if each document had an easily readable number in the upper right corner showing which case it belongs to.

Steward's Sourcebook

To learn more about the educational opportunities available from the International, or to schedule a steward training session for your local lodge, contact Education and Training Services.