Weingarten Rights

njjel

Our union contract specifies that the company may terminate an employee for any reason during the probationary period and the union agrees to not file a grievance. Must we still allow them to have a union rep at the termination meeting or is this not required due to the fact that they are in their probationary period and may be treated as an at-will employee?

LindaS

Not required. They are not members of the bargaining agreement until they have completed their probationary period and as such, are not subject to any of the rights outlined in the collective bargaining agreement.

ACU Frank

Does that apply even if you've been deducting union dues?

allsteaks

Better check your specific contract language. The union can represent an employee even probationaries, if it is not excluded in the language. This implied relationship is supported by the union dues issue. In my experience it has been a "can" or "may", and not a requirement for the union to be present. Some probationaries request them and we've accommodated them.

ACU Frank

If your contract says they can't file a grievance in their first 90 days, then what the heck - let the union accompany them. On the shop floor, it will weaken the perception that the union will help.

njjel

In this specific case there was no shop steward or union officer available to attend the meeting. the meeting was to terminate a probationary ee for poor performance. Our contract just states that for the first 180 days (probationary period) they will not grieve terminations. The meeting had been set and then she requested a rep be present and none was available so she invoked Weingarten and a postponement of the meeting (she did not know the reason for the meeting other than to discuss her probationary progress). So could one of our attorneys weigh in on this one too?

ritaanz

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-13-07 AT 07:47AM (CST)[/font][br][br]From the way I see it, the meeting was for termination of an employee that did not qualify during their probationaryt period.

Employees have Weingarten rights only during investigatory interviews. An investigatory interview occurs when a supervisor questions an employee to obtain information which could be used as a basis for discipline or asks an employee to defend his or her conduct.

If an employee has a reasonable belief that discipline or other adverse consequences may result from what he or she says, the employee has the right to request union representation. Management is not required to inform the employee of his/her Weingarten rights; it is the employees responsibility to know and request.

njjel

OK. So we would be ok in the future for termination during probationary period to terminate them without having to have a rep or officer present? Do we all agree on that?

davids

Probationary employees are part of the union are have all rights accorded by the collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Your CBA, like many others, however, does not accord the probationary employee the specific right to grieve termination during the probationary period.

I agree with ritaanz that Weingarten rights apply only during the investigation phase. Even with a non-probationary employee, once the investigation is complete and you have determined that discipline is warranted, the employee does not have rights to a union rep. when you are informing him/her of the disciplinary action.

Having said all of this, what's the harm in allowing the union rep. to be present?

njjel

To answer your question - there is no harm in having a rep present. What the issue was was that there was no rep available at the time we chose to terminate the probationary employee and we wanted to go forward with it, but then she invoked the Weingarten Rights and we allowed her to postpone the meeting (I had advised upper management that those rights didn't apply in the situation, but they thought otherwise).