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Ralph thinks he has a problem and goes to his steward. My boss has been getting on my back and I needed to teach him a lesson, so I didn't come in on Thursday. We don't like it, but for now that's the way it is. In UE we know that a big part of our job as a steward is to protect the gains we have won in our contracts, to fight to improve our wages, hours and working conditions, and to defend workers against injustice from management.
We also know that sometimes we have to defend workers that we or others may not personally like, because we must defend a principle bigger than the individual person.
Throughout the years a legal principle has been developed by the National Labor Relations Board called "the duty of fair representation" DFR. This legal principle quite simply states that a union must represent all workers equally and without prejudice.
A union cannot refuse to represent or improperly represent a worker due to the worker's age, race, creed, nationality, sex, religion, political beliefs, union status or personality.
If a union fails to represent a worker due to prejudice, or hostility, the union can be charged. The idea of failure to represent includes failing to properly investigate a grievance, process a grievance, or in some cases, even to arbitrate a grievance.
The duty to represent all workers is especially true in the case where a non-member or anti-union worker files a grievance. Personal feelings or the feelings of the membership cannot be allowed to interfere with the processing of that person's grievance. The key factor in a "failure to represent" case is that the union knowingly commits these acts because of prejudice or hostility towards an individual. If an honest mistake is made, that is not considered to be "failure to represent.
A union loses a case because they missed the time table for advancing the grievance to the next step. The grievant files a complaint that the union violated the duty of fair representation because they missed the time limit.
In this case, normally the union would not be found guilty of a DFR unless it could be proven that the union missed the time limit because they were prejudiced or hostile against the grievant for some reason. We in the UE have always felt it is the role of the union to fight against any kind of discrimination or harassment a worker may be suffering related to their race, nationality or sex.
The incident must be investigated and, if necessary, action must be taken. If the harassment is coming from another worker the union must approach it just as seriously as if the harassment was coming from a member of management. Failure to help a worker who is the victim of harassment is wrong and can be a violation of the union's duty of fair representation.
The grievance procedure, and the union exist to improve the conditions of working people and by keeping this in mind we won't have to worry about complaints of failing to represent the membership. Joan goes and talks to some of the other stewards. None of them think Ralph has a good case although there are some factors complicating the situation. One of them points out that the reason that the company demanded in the last negotiations that employees had to work the day before and the day after a holiday was because of a few people like Ralph, who always took extra days off.
Another steward points out that Ralphs' boss is a jerk and maybe he has been harassing Ralph. Joan decides to investigate more on the possible harassment of Ralph. She is going to let Ralph present his case in the first step of the grievance procedure. She will try to make the discussion deal with the attitude of Ralphs' boss. The stewards agree that Ralph doesn't have a chance to get the holiday pay, so they won't pursue that grievance past the first step, but they will pursue the question of harassment.
They will also tell Ralph that the way to deal with harassment is through the grievance procedure. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. The duty of fair representation is the legal duty of a union to equally, and in good faith, represent every employee in a bargaining unit, regardless of whether the employee is a union member or not.
This legal duty arises out of the exclusive representative status unions hold under the National Labor Relations Act in the private sector and under state collective bargaining laws in the public sector. The duty requires three things on the part of the union: If basic UE principles in grievance handling are followed there should not be a problem with a "failure to represent" charge.
