Employee Rights Review- Grievance Procedure
Ever wonder what to do when you beleive that the Agency has violated one of your rights under the Master Agreement? This article will guide you into the steps needed to take prior and during a Grievance procedure. You will find the provisions relating to the Negotiated Grievance Procedure under the Master Agreement Article 43.
Before filing a Grievance, we must first determine if there is a violation to an article of the Master Agreement or a law.
For the purposes of this article, we will only be discussing violations to the Master Agreement, legal rights violations are not covered under the Master Agreement and undergo a different process.
Once it is determined that there is a violation to your negotiated rights and you decide that you would like to file a Grievance, you have 30 days from the moment of the incident or from the moment that you became aware to file a Grievance Article 43 Section 7 (Step 1).
Before filing a Grievance, you must know what resolution you would like to achieve so that it may be included as part of the Grievance.
There are 3 Steps to the Negotiated Grievance Procedure: A. Step I goes to your immediate Supervisor; they have 14 days to meet and provide an answer to your Grievance. B. If the Grievance is not satisfactory resolved at Step I, we may raise a Grievance Step II; This Grievance will be presented to the Service/Division Chief to attempt resolution at that level. A Grievance Step II needs to be filed within 7 calendar days of receiving the Grievance I decision letter and the Service/Division Chief will have 10 days from the receipt of the Grievance to meet and respond to it. C. If there is no satisfactory settlement at the Step II level, we may rise a Grievance Step III; This Grievance will be presented to the Director or designee and should be presented within 7 days of receiving the Grievance Step II decision. The Director will have 7 days to meet to discuss the Grievance and will have an additional 10 days after the meeting to present a written response. D. There is a 4th Step to the Grievance procedure, which is to file an Arbitration, however, only the Union or the Department can refer a Grievance to arbitration. It will be at their discretion if the Grievance may be raised to arbitration or not.
Keep in mind that we always encourage employees to file a Grievance through the Union, if we are not envolved we are unable to help you, so reach out to your Union Representative and go discuss your options for filing a Grievance as soon as you suspect that the Agency has violated your rights!
If you would like to request a Grievance Filing, click here to get the process started.
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