The Role of Union Stewards

Stewards are the first-line representatives of a union local.  They're workers themselves, and the people other workers and management deal with on a day-to-day basis as everyone (hopefully) tries to develop and maintain an equitable workplace culture.  A steward's duties and responsibilities are many and serving well may require a wide variety of skills.

First and foremost, a steward is charged with policing the collective bargaining agreement - seeing that the terms are respected by all parties, identifying and addressing actual or potential problems of many kinds, investigating disputes and trying to resolve them at the workplace level. These tasks require a good working knowledge of the contract terms, of understandings and past-practices, of basic labor law, plus common sense, patience, and good listening skills.

A steward is a representative - of union members to union officers (and vice-versa), of the union local to new workers, and of workers to management.  If a contract violation is thought to have taken place and the matter can't be resolved by direct negotiation, the steward is responsible for filing a grievance, for representing any affected workers in all stages of the grievance resolution process, and for seeing (with expert assistance as needed) that the grievance is moved forward through that process in a timely way and in full accordance with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement and of labor law.

A steward must be a leader - serving union members as a source of information and sound advice, maintaining a spirit of solidarity among people of diverse backgrounds and interests, encouraging members to participate in developing good solutions to workplace problems, acting as an identifier of new or changing work which may affect the union, and encouraging members to participate actively in union affairs at the local and broader levels.

From The AFSCME Steward Handbook.

Submitted by Ed Deegan, Library Specialist, Fisher Fine Arts Library