Kroger Steward Best Practices

     I wanted to write to all of our brother and sister Union Stewards, who work hard to serve our members and represent them in their times in need, to share some best practices to help you and our membership succeed. What I want to accomplish by writing to you is raise awareness, educate, and guide our Stewards in the right direction when representing your coworkers. Acting together in how our Union Stewards serve in their duties, and being consistent in how we police our Union contract and workplace issues, are important to our membership’s success.

Below are some Union Steward best practices to put into use by you and other Union Stewards in your store:

• When a member in your store is being disciplined by management, it is important for you to be present in those discipline meetings to help support our members.
• Stewards should not be writing statements against members that the Company may use as evidence in disciplinary meetings (if you are a witness of some incident, and a statement is requested by management, please contact your Union Rep).
• If you need additional help in a meeting with management and need to request the Union Rep to be present in the meeting to assist you and our member, you have the right to request that.
• There is no need for you, as the Union Steward, to sign discipline letters that are issued to employees from the Company.
• If a member asks for you to be present in a disciplinary meeting with Management, and that request is denied, that is a violation of your contract and Weingarten rights.
• If you find out that a coworker has been suspended or terminated without your knowledge or while you were not at work, you should have a discussion with your store manager as to what occurred to help determine if a contract violation took place.
• If you need help representing a member, please call the Union office at 281-448-5555 or your Union Rep directly on their cell phone.
• Remember that all members deserve to be heard, treated fairly, and workplace issues handled consistently amongst all members in the shop.

As a Union Steward it is also important to read and post our common contract violations postings on our Union bulletin boards. That will also help in our efforts to police our Union contract with the Company and help in your part to make sure workers in your shop are treated fairly, workplace issues handled with consistency, and in line with our Union contract.

Thank you for serving our hardworking members and for being a trusted source of information for them.