Important Items For Stewards
The following twenty-five items will serve as a checklist or a
set of goals you might set for yourself in becoming a good steward.
- Keep yourself informed on union affairs.
- Serve as an example to your members.
- Keep the members informed on union policies and union
activities.
- Attend union meetings and union affairs. Encourage and bring
the members from your department. Don't chide members for missing
meetings. Think of other ways to communicate with them.
- Meet the new members early, inform them, educate them, help
them become members - make them more than dues payers.
- Get your location to act as a union - have them stick
together.
- Act as a leader - do not let personal likes or dislikes
prejudice your actions as a grievance representative.
- Fight, discrimination, whether it be overt or very discreet.
Discourage it - discourage prejudice of any kind.
- Keep accurate and up-to-date records. Write it down.
- Do not promise, if you cannot deliver.
- Encourage political action on the part of your members. See to
it that they are registered and vote.
- Be an active worker in your Political programs by signing members,
distributing literature, and working every day as if it were
Election Day eve.
- Know how to refer to the union contract, by-laws, and local and
international constitutions. If you are not sure, seek help so
that you can become familiar with the documents.
- Encourage and support the union's activities on behalf of
organizing the unorganized.
- Inform the membership of union services. Encourage them to
take advantage of not only the services the union sponsors
outright, but those that the union helps subsidize. If your local
does not already have a community services representative,
encourage the local in creating one.
- Fight, whenever you meet it, the anti-union element. You can
best do this by being informed and being dedicated to the labor
movement.
- Do not hesitate or stall. If you do not know, admit you do not
know. Then try to get the answer.
- Keep your workers informed on sources of information. Give
pertinent information whenever a worker wants it.
- In dealing with the management, remember that you are the
elected or appointed representative of your fellow members. Never
consider yourself to be inferior to management representatives.
You are always their equal.
- Be proud of your position. Remember you are a union
representative of your local union which has the full support of
tens of thousands of members bound together in an international
union, with the support of millions of other union members.
- Wear your union button and encourage your coworkers to wear
it.
- Investigate every grievance as if it were your own. Keep the
member informed. Make sure you keep your deadlines. There is no
excuse for missing a time limit. Research every grievance as if it
were going to arbitration but try to resolve it at the lowest
possible level. Keep your local union informed of the status of
each grievance.
- Attend and encourage attendance at any labor education program
that might be available to you and your members.
- Remember your goal is to be the best union representative you
can be. Always strive for this goal. Excellence has no
substitute.
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Copyright © 1999 Transit Employees Association of Texas.