Why we fight.
At the beginning of this school year I took a grievance to our local union leadership. I believed that are collectively bargained agreement with the school board had been violated by my principal. The president and grievance chair of our local agreed that the principal had not followed the rules when she placed a teacher in a job opening.
Our CBA provides for five steps in resolving a grievance. The first step is to have both sides engage in informal discussion. The last step has both sides taking the issue to outside arbitration.
In all my years of union activity most issues get settled by discussion. We rarely go to to the first of three formal steps prior to arbitration.
We have never gone to step three.
Never to arbitration.
It is a sign of the troubles these days that this grievance went to step three. The next step would have been
