HOW TO ADD CLOUT TO YOUR GRIEVANCE

Wouldn’t you love to make a grievance twice as worrisome for management and give the grievant the chance to get a much bigger payoff than a simple allegation of a contract violation? Well, the way to do that is to allege illegal discrimination whenever you can. You can allege it anytime you want, but there are two good rules of thumb for when to absolutely do it.  Below is a very brief explanation of why a discrimination allegation supercharges a grievance.

The first rule is to level the allegation whenever you have evidence of a prima facie case of discrimination. EEOC has a great guide to what constitutes prima facie evidence, but FEDSMILL.com also has more than a dozen posts explaining it.  Search the term “facie.” The other rule of thumb is to allege it anytime you cannot unquestionably rule out discrimination.  I like that rule because it accounts for the situation where the union only discovers evidence of discrimination two months into the grievance—when it is often too late to allege discrimination.

Now, why does a discrimination allegation super charge a grievance?

1. It gives you greater rights to get informationfrom management than the narrow labor law entitlement of particularized need.
2. If discrimination is found, the employee can get up to $300,000 in compensatory damages and even more in costs and pecuniary damages. That is on top of whatever backpay the employee is owed. You cannot get those remedies if you only allege a contract violation.
3. If the amount of money awarded a successful grievant is so large as to increase his income rate, the employee can get extra money to pay the income tax difference. You cannot get that if you only allege a contract violation.
4. The union attorney can get attorney fees even when back pay is not awarded.
5. The arbitrator can ignore the labor law “management rights” restrictions on a contract grievance and order people retroactively promoted when priority consideration is the only remedy in a contract grievance.

Or just imagine the grievant’s face and state of mind if s/he learns that even though they won the grievance, the union’s drafting of the grievance cost them all those benefits.