KNOW YOUR CONTRACT

Your fellow workers don’t expect you to know everything, and they’ll respect you a lot more if you don’t try to bluff your way out of things. But they do expect you, as their leader, to be well informed. To educate workers so that they understand and cooperate with union policies, you must first educate yourself.

"Know your contract!" This is the first commandment for the stewards.

To know if the company and the union are living up to their agreement, you must know what’s in it. Unless you know what it says, you cannot tell a worker if he’s right about it. You certainly can’t discuss it intelligently with management.

Read over every word of it. Go over it at stewards’ meetings. Discuss it with union officers. Become familiar with the provisions. Understand how they apply to special conditions in your department.

Keep up-to-date with arbitration decisions and new interpretations of the different clauses. When you know your contract as well as you do the alphabet you can begin to shine as a steward.

Remember the union is not a slot machine where a worker puts in his dues and gets the jackpot in the form of higher pay, shorter hours, better lighting, longer vacations, it all takes work! But it’s worth it. As steward, you have to do a lot of the day-to day work. But if you are a good leader, you’ll get cooperation from your fellow workers and your union officials as well as from management and this helps make the job easier.

You will have headaches, but you will also get breaks. Stewardship gives valuable experience. From adjusting plant grievances you may come to represent labor in industry-wide conferences, policy-making conventions or even government agencies. The keystone of the local union may be the stepping stone to greater union leadership.