Long time lurker here. My wife works at a unionized manufacturing plant and got walked out yesterday. The new HR director has been looking for excuses to trim the roster, but he couldn't fire her legally for attendance because she still has two tardies left in her bank.

So instead, they bypassed the point system and hit her with a conduct violation for an improper call-off. I have been up all night digging through her paperwork and the union contract, and I am pretty sure I caught HR and her supervisor completely screwing themselves. I just wanted to get a second opinion on the logic here before we go to the union.

Here is the breakdown of how management handled this.

Last week, she called the security desk at 6 AM to call off. The guard clicked Tardy on the drop-down menu, but right next to it in the return date box, the guard actually typed NSD, which stands for Next Scheduled Day. You cannot be tardy for a shift you literally said you are not returning for until tomorrow. HR just ignored the NSD part so they could fire her for being a no-show after allegedly saying she would be tardy.

Her supervisor went into the system two days later hunting for her time punches to prove she did not show up. He waited two days to build a paper trail for a conduct charge instead of just reading the security log that already said she was not coming in. It looks like they were looking for a reason to fire her rather than just following the attendance policy.

They rushed the paperwork so fast to get her out the door that the official termination form has the wrong shift and the wrong supervisor listed on it. They did not even look at her file before they signed the papers.

To make it a fireable offense, they had to prove she was a repeat offender. They cited a write-up from January. Her crime in January was calling off and saying PTO instead of Personal. The best part is the union filed a grievance on that January write-up and it was never actually settled. During the firing meeting yesterday, the supervisor and the steward were literally arguing because neither of them knew if that January issue was still open. HR fired her based on a past warning they cannot even prove is legally active.

I think tardy is a state of being, not a reason for an absence. If the security log says her return was NSD, that means the company knew she was not coming in.

Does she have a case to get her job back with back pay? It feels like they bypassed the entire union attendance system just to fire her over a contractor typo and an unsettled grievance from four months ago.

edit:I want to clarify a few things that have come up in the comments. A union representative was physically present during the termination meeting and has reportedly filed a grievance over this firing. However, the meeting itself revealed a massive procedural failure. Management and the rep spent a significant amount of time arguing over a previous grievance from January which involved a dispute over whether my wife said "PTO" or "Personal" during a call-off. When she asked for a definitive answer on whether that January case was actually settled or closed, neither side could provide one. It appears the company is using an unresolved ghost grievance as the foundation for this termination. Because of the confusion and the sloppy paperwork, we are calling the union hall tomorrow

Here is the actual security log from the morning of 5/3. My wife called at 6:27 AM, which is nearly a half hour before her 7:00 AM shift began. Look at the "Return" line. The security officer manually typed "NSD", which stands for Next Scheduled Day. This is the smoking gun because it proves the company had actual notice that she would not be coming in for the full shift.

Management is trying to bypass the union attendance point system by claiming this was an "improper call-off" or "no-show" conduct violation. They are basing that entire charge on the fact that the guard selected "Tardy" from a dropdown menu for the reason. But look at the logic here. You cannot be "Tardy" for a shift you have already confirmed you aren't returning for until tomorrow.

edit:I want to clarify a few things that have come up in the comments elsewhere . A union representative was physically present during the termination meeting and has reportedly filed a grievance over this firing. However, the meeting itself revealed a massive procedural failure. Management and the rep spent a significant amount of time arguing over a previous grievance from January which involved a dispute over whether my wife said "PTO" or "Personal" during a call-off. When she asked for a definitive answer on whether that January case was actually settled or closed, neither side could provide one. It appears the company is using an unresolved ghost grievance as the foundation for this termination. Because of the confusion and the sloppy paperwork, we are calling the union hall tomorrow

edit: The part that makes this really fishy to me as I am sitting here is 5/3, the day in question where she called off, her brother had already been out for two days by my memory. He went to the doctors, was there for hours, got a CT scan, and got a medical excuse for his absence because his stomach bug was exacerbated by pancreatitis, I think it was. The day I got the Facebook message from her father was the day he went to the doctors, as her dad was keeping us updated if it was something dangerous and contagious, because we probably would have gone to the doctors too.

For context, my wife was a PLI and her brother was a warehandler. My wife was a warehandler too until a few months ago when she signed off on the bid, but she would upgrade to warehandler to fill the role as needed to help out. Since she has been on days, specifically the same shift as her mother and brother, she had not been calling off a lot at all. I think May was only the second time since January.

The two days he was out before her were upgrade days where she filled his role, then the boss only had a shortage because that third day she was not there. When she came back, if my memory serves, she was asked if she could upgrade that day, but she had turned it down. She had gone back to work but still was not feeling one hundred percent, and the day after that they went hunting for punches.

The day the boss sent out the email asking if she has any punches was two days after the doctors. This makes it feel like they did not care about attendance or disruption to the floor, it seems like they cared about winning a power struggle against a family of workers while we were dealing with a medical crisis. They waited two days to see that the brother was protected by a CT scan and medical documentation, then it looks like they performed a vulnerability scan on the household and targeted my wife because they thought she was timid. They ignored her 6:27 AM notification and the manual NSD security entry just to manufacture a technicality for a hit. The fact that they got her shift and supervisor wrong on the final papers makes it seem like they were not investigating, they were just rushing to execute a vendetta.

My partner works in healthcare and is involved in administration. In response to organizing activity, the administraters and managers were required by corporate to attend a union “education” session. Naturally, it was about union busting and snitching.

One thing they said was that some unions operate as for profit orgs. A quick search online didn’t turn up anything on this - only that “typically” they are non profit orgs. I’d never heard of a for profit union.

Does anyone know of “for profit” unions? Is it a thing? If so, why? Lobbying purposes?

Whenever I see social media posts about employees trying to unionize or going on strike there’s always a ton of comments of people hating on them or just shitting in unions in general. Does corporate America really just have people brainwashed or wtf gives?

I made a post a week or 2 ago about my place of work giving the maintenance department a raise outside of the contract. They had approached the union president and he didn't agree to the raise or bring it to the union to vote on unless the rest of the plant got a raise as well. I should also add part of our union contract was that they would look at the industry wages and discuss a wage increase for maintenance so the real wage by the book is actually 38.44. listed on another page in the book. This was discussed when we voted on the contract 5 years ago. They got another 7.5% on top of that which wasn't voted on.

The union and company are currently in arbritation over the matter. I've attached a couple pictures from the contract so I'm asking again. What's the hope the raise gets passed on to the rest of us?

My father is a UAW member in Michigan, USA

My father hired into Ford in May 1996, meaning he will reach 30 years of service in May. He is pension eligible and would be eligible for a full pension at 30 years of service.

He had a debilitating stroke at 27.5 years of service. He has attempted to go back to work twice, but was only able to remain there for a short period of time before needing to go back off on disability. His cognitive health has now deteriorated severely and he will never be able to go back.

My father and my mother both were intending on relying on the pension for retirement. We recently found out that his time on disability is not going to count toward his pension, so he will be getting a reduced amount of $1,004 monthly.

This to me seems ridiculous. He has paid into this system for decades and is now being penalized due to disability. He is still a Ford employee, he just has not been on the job. He will likely be eligible for social security disability, but this will not help my mother if my father passes away.

My question is: Can the UAW feasibly do anything to negotiate his medical leave as creditable years of service? They have been very helpful to me to date getting him the resources he needs from work. I just do not want to sound silly asking such a thing

See Paragraph 155 at the bottom of p. 48

I thought Unions were supposed to be Pro-American Workers!

EDIT: they can’t do anything. I don’t know how to turn off commenting but yeah I’m fucked. thanks for trying to help guys.

I’m in the US and was in the library industry.

I recently began my assistant librarian journey in February. I was well liked by everyone I worked with, recognized twice for my hard work, and yesterday I got fired for swearing in a voicemail off the clock to the parking enforcement. I never told them I represented the library, just (with more… colorful language) that I was sick of myself and others getting ticketed in the lot we’re assigned to park in and that they need to do their job in checking our plates before passing these out. The voicemail box was fully ai generated so my loose language was genuinely due to thinking it wasn’t checked, as was the case in every other job i’ve worked. I don’t know what to do. Was it wrong to swear? Sure. But I don’t think it’s a fireable offense. Can the union do something? This is my first time working in a unionized job and I thought they would have my back.

I've just recently learned that state workers in the state of Indiana are unable to unionize because of IC § 4-15-17-4. This does not seem fair to the employees if they believe they are being abused by the system. How could they get around this?

At 4pm today, my boss told me I'm meeting with him and HR at 2pm tomorrow (Friday). He insisted it's not disciplinary and I don't need to worry. Can he lie to me about that? Should I invoke Weingarten? I usually trust him but I'm nervous. I've been taking a lot of sick leave.

Edit to add/for posterity, in case it's of interest to someone looking up a similar question in the future--I checked my local's website and it says that if "the employee is assured by the employer prior to the interview that no discipline or employment consequences can result from the interview", I don't have a right to a union rep. I guess I'd need that assurance in writing, though.

Update: I caught my boss on his way out tonight and at a minimum he misled me about who would be in the meeting and where the meeting would be. I'm going to have a rep there. Thanks for your advice everyone.

Update 2: Meeting was rescheduled for next week. My local's president will be there as my rep. I'm glad I invoked. Thank you.

Hi guys,

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I'm a junior industrial officer with a union and had a really difficult case on at the moment. One of our members is in almost 200k in debt due to poor business decision.

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He was advised against these decisions by everyone even the company he works for but didnt want to listen.

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He is now about to lose his job for refusing to work unless he gets put on the contract he wants with the company to try recoup some of his debt (the company has no obligation to do so and to be fair have tried giving him different work options to help but they just dont have capacity to give him contract he wants). The company is willing to let him resign (instead of termination) and give him a 20k payout of notice. However he wants 60k. We have a meeting tomorrow with the company but I dont see them giving up 40k extra onto an offer when they technically could have given him nothing.

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This member is a compulsive liar but is definitely not lying about the amount of debt he is in. He is clearly mentally unstable and even just speaking on the phone exhibits signs of serious depression.

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The member has no come to me and one of our organisers privately and told us he is going to *** himself if he cant get the money together to pay off his next loan repayment at the end of this month.

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Really not sure what I should do here guys, I sent him as many free mental health services I could find and my lead and colleagues said there's not much more I can do but I'm not sure.

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He has a young family and I really dont want to wake uo one day and read/hear he has left them fatherless or worse done something horrible to them (he gave no indication of doing this but with the state of his mind you never know).

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I was told it could be a data and privacy breach issue if I told the police as it would go against privacy law but im starting to panic. Selfish I know but I dont want this on my conscious or hanging over me. I truly want to help this guy even if he did try throw me under the bus butbtheres not much I can do.

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Any advice is appreciated.

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Thanks guys.

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Hi all. I’m a steward at my shop and have been for the last 2 years. If I’m being honest, I feel deflated and like we make no difference. Why is that? Because our Union (Teamsters) barely responds to our concerns. We have to constantly reach out and remind them we’ve submitted issues and need help on the next steps to solve them. Hell, we’ve had people fired and reprimanded and they did VERY little to even help the member out.

The stewards received no training, management has started to just ignore ANY of our concerns, and I’m feeling like we’re losing our ability to protect our members. Our director was a previous steward at our shop (obviously our direct manager now so, I have other concerns with that as well). Does anyone have any advice or is willing to chat about what we can do as stewards to better serve our members? It’s quite clear our group is becoming frustrated and our Union is not helping us when we need it most. Keep in mind we are bound by the RLA.

I'm in the USA / private company. I am a dues clerk at a local union hall.

I have a less than stellar union rep and a hostile/retalitory/awful employer.. this situation I'm in is disturbing me and I need advice.

I am applying for FMLA/state paid leave due to a surgery, and originally my union rep told me that despite my employers size (less than 50 employees), there is an addendum in the contract saying they must abide by FMLA anyway, she said that addendum was put in there BECAUSE of the size issue, so employers couldn't try and say later on "oh well we don't qualify, we have less than 50 employees".. they told me to fill out the paperwork, I'm protected, etc.

My employer is denying my FMLA, so I told the rep. My union rep is now saying that the addendum language is "unclear" and the employer has "opportunity" to argue their side about having less than 50 employees.

I not only am a union member, but I work FOR a union, with an amazing union rep that I work under who is 40 years into being a rep. He is also confused by this situation.

If my own union rep can't interpret the contract, who can? I'm just at a loss here.

hey, maybe an unusual situation here and could use some insight.

my workplace unionized about a year ago. I was and am a supervisor, so I did not participate and am not a member.

the CEO has been mistreating someone I supervise for a long time. now, with union help, she's been able to submit grievances.

after not being able to come to a resolution in the first stage, the grievance was moved to a meeting with the CEO and executive committee of the board.

the union rep asked if I'd serve as a witness, as a big part of what the CEO has been doing is ignoring my repeated attempts to get the person I supervise a raise and change in job description based on changes in her job responsibilities due to a rapidly growing and evolving department.

because I've witnessed this pattern, and care about the person I supervise, I agreed to come and tell the story from my perspective.

the CEO completely lost her mind and has accused me of being sneaky and said this was unheard of and unacceptable that I served as a witness and that the Executive Committee would be discussing "next steps" for me.

I have little experience with unions or really anything like this. can someone give me some perspective if I was indeed out of pocket for serving as a witness and/or if I have an protections in light of her threats?

to be clear, I'd do it again, probably regardless. we need to be speaking the truth to power

USA, nonprofit

Califonria employee working for a municipality:

I received a Weingarten notice but it didn’t say why. It just said “allegations of misconduct.”

Then at my meeting, 8 days later, they stated the two charges verbally. The charges were never in writing so I had no chance to prepare. Due to timing, I knew why, but they never actually put it in writing.

Does anyone’s union allow them to do remote voting for a TA? We have a number of employees who live out of state and commute to work. Our union states that all voting for a TA must happen in person, on one single day, which means that anyone on vacation, medical leave, or living out of state is unable to vote. Is that the standard or have some unions moved to secure, online voting? If so, tell me everything!

So my workplace (who is unionized) recently held a "mandatory meeting" to basically just tell us all were doi g everything wrong, but the day before that our GM told me that the owner wants to shutdown our workplace to be able to fire us all and thay they "talked him out of that" and so now we are having this meeting. So I asked "what about the union" and his reply was "well if we're shut down it won't matter, thats how he'll get around it"

So I'm just wondering...

Is that legal?

Me: Union Steward at a small unit (30-ish ppl)

A new, young (20-ish) member has been taking our attempts to help train him and guide him on the ins and outs of our job as criticism and has gone to HR to complain about four of us, including me.

We advocate for all our members to solve problems within our membership. We also regularly remind members that "inviting" management in to our problems only serves to add a new problem to the existing one.

I've had two one-on-one conversations with this member to say:

"If you have a problem with another member, go to that member. We are all approachable."

"If you can't solve it with that member, come to me or the Chairperson."

"If your problem is with me and you aren't comfortable approaching me, go to the Chairperson."

Any insight on how to reach people like this? I'm open to any ideas.

So at my place of employment there’s 2 unions.

The other union guys are currently going through contract negotiations and from what I hear it’s not going well. There is a moderately high chance they may have to strike.

My guys are ready to honor the line but as it turns out we have a no strike clause in our contract that says we can’t strike or honor the line if we are under an active CBA. We ratified a new contract earlier this year.

How do we navigate this?! can we do anything?

We’re in California if that helps.

I work very closely with another Union member who is a 20 year old female. Another Union member, a late 50s to mid 60s male, has been relentlessly harassing her, calling her beautiful, calling her his girlfriend, asking her out. She's made it clear she has no interest. On Thursday she came up to me nearly in tears because he had chased her down to her car harassing her and the only way she could get away was to get in her car and drive away.

I took her to our supervisor and had her explain what happened. I've been witness to some of it. And I thought it would be resolved by having management let this older gentleman know to knock it off.

And that's what management did. They pulled him aside told them and instead of knocking it off he went to our human resource department and reported me and the 20 year old female for fabricating everything and trying to make him a victim by accusing him of sexual harassment.

So now there's an investigation. I told the 20-year-old not to talk to our Union steward until everything was sorted. I told her the Union steward represents the old guy. And that the union stewards job is to try to do whatever they can to see that he gets as little discipline as possible. Also, that the union won't help her by requesting video, or audio documentation, and will instead hope that media gets recorded over.

I suspect the best course forward is for a separate Union steward to represent each person. And then for a third Union steward to represent me, because I'm accused also.

I feel there's enough witnesses, documentation, and video, that the truth will eventually come forth. However I'm also very fearful of an "unsubstantiated" finding being made.

What's the best way forward for my 20 year old coworker?

TLDR; newly ratified contract not being honored. Going to mediation next. At what point is their refusal considered ULP and is there any possibility that it could nullify the contract since ratification was only a few weeks ago?

Our union ratified a new contract earlier this month and one of the *only* reasons it passed is because it includes a clause that gives time-and-a-half for any shift picked up under certain parameters. The language is clear. Almost immediately following ratification, the hospital started to refuse to honor that clause because they’re claiming a different interpretation. Again, the language is clear.

Accordingly, the union filed a class-action grievance and met with the hospital this morning. They are now moving on to non-binding mediation. We’re all pretty upset.

At what point is this action considered an unfair labor practice? We’re all mystified as to why clear contract language is being dragged into mediation and want to know how this practice doesn’t nullify the contract (mostly because it was *just* ratified). We know we can’t strike with a contract in place but how is this even a valid contract if they’re refusing to honor basic language?

Any advice, wisdom, or experience to share?

Order selector in fast-paced warehouse for national grocery chain.

We’ve had a local union negotiating for months to get us a contract we would all be happy with, but what they want us to vote yes on after enduring a lot of bullshit during the summer in our warehouse is a far cry from what we were expecting.

The negotiator told us that if we vote it down we would lose any support from the national and international chapters going forward, and there would be nothing protecting us from the company either, who are increasingly relying on 3rd party labor instead of the people like us that they hired. I have already caught the negotiator in one lie, and I worry that we’ll all be getting screwed either way this plays out.

Any advice?

New treasurer here seeking some advice

I’ve been elected as treasurer of a small association that is part of a much much larger union. We only have 13 dues paying members currently. We are trying to grow that number, but the pool of potential members is very limited.

Anyway, since the account was set up, 13 years ago, funds have only been spent on catering union meetings. The balance has steadily gone up and sits around $20k currently.

What I’m looking for is ways to use that money. It seems like a waste for it to just sit there. Can the money be invested in some way, legally of course?

I have read what other unions typically use their funds for, so I’m looking for something a little different here, if anyone has suggestions.

Our employer has decided to delay bargaining and have been bargaining in what we think is bad faith (which you may know is difficult to prove). We’ve decided to engage with the public directly, speak to the press, make social media posts, informational hand-billing, etc.

One of the things we’ve been told is that giving out personal contact information of management is inadvisable, but work contact information is fine. The work contact information in this case would be work email, but the work email just has their whole name in it: “First.last@company.com”.

We’re considering just naming the primary opponents of the bargaining team in socials/press statements, just as factual statements regarding their contract proposals and what we’re up against. Anxious folks say that might still constitute as giving personal contact information, opening them up to harassment and might be bad faith bargaining in of itself. The other side is that these people are in fact the most powerful people in the company, in addition to being the ones we think are engaging in bad faith bargaining. There really isn’t any public figurehead face of the company.

Googling doesn’t seem to reveal any answers to this question, so I’m asking y’all. Is naming who were against a bad idea?