Recently one of my Local presidents told me that his stewards aren’t expected to handle arbitration hearings, but he did need them to understand arbitration better so that as they work the grievances they are doing it in a way that best supports success at the hearing. I put together a one-hour presentation (with slideshow) that briefly explained to them what happens in an arbitration so they could see what was going to be needed at that step. They had no visibility of that before, not having been at a hearing. Then I reminded them that the grievance they present at the first step is the same grievance that’s going to go to arbitration; there’s no magic or silver bullet at the end. We walked thru the grievance process starting with when they first get a complaint, through investigation, evidence, witnesses, the various steps, keeping good records etc. It’s too soon for them to have worked a case thru the 3rd step since that briefing, so I don’t have results to share other than they did seem better prepared.
Robin Johnson AFGE
This might be stating the obvious but our grievance committee has been successful lately after re-thinking the claim writing process and going back to basics. I looked at all the ways we were being denied on merit and worked backwards to how we could have won it. We have had a lot of success with just sticking to the 5 W’s and keeping the argument limited to undisputed facts based on the contract language, without trying to outsmart the reviewing officer with suppositions or proving that they lied during a conference. It seems if you do not give them a life preserver to grasp then it is difficult to spin.
Recently one of my Local presidents told me that his stewards aren’t expected to handle arbitration hearings, but he did need them to understand arbitration better so that as they work the grievances they are doing it in a way that best supports success at the hearing. I put together a one-hour presentation (with slideshow) that briefly explained to them what happens in an arbitration so they could see what was going to be needed at that step. They had no visibility of that before, not having been at a hearing. Then I reminded them that the grievance they present at the first step is the same grievance that’s going to go to arbitration; there’s no magic or silver bullet at the end. We walked thru the grievance process starting with when they first get a complaint, through investigation, evidence, witnesses, the various steps, keeping good records etc. It’s too soon for them to have worked a case thru the 3rd step since that briefing, so I don’t have results to share other than they did seem better prepared.
This might be stating the obvious but our grievance committee has been successful lately after re-thinking the claim writing process and going back to basics. I looked at all the ways we were being denied on merit and worked backwards to how we could have won it. We have had a lot of success with just sticking to the 5 W’s and keeping the argument limited to undisputed facts based on the contract language, without trying to outsmart the reviewing officer with suppositions or proving that they lied during a conference. It seems if you do not give them a life preserver to grasp then it is difficult to spin.