Know Your Rights: Weingarten Rights

I am following in GESTA Area Vice President, Dave William’s footsteps and using popular culture as a starting point for an important discussion. In his case, he wrote about a coach leveling with his team that he was going to leave for a new job, and suggesting that Goddard management would do well to emulate his example. In my case, I will use the Clash song “Know Your Rights” as a motivation for sharing information about your rights as a GESTA bargaining unit employee. The song is “a public service announcement, with guitars”, commenting on life in Thatcher’s UK, but it resonates with me here and now. Knowing your rights under Federal law and GESTA’s agreements with Goddard is important to all of us right now.  This is the first in a series of articles covering these rights.

Our collective bargaining agreement (CBA) covers a wide range of topics, ranging from competitive promotions to free parking being available  (Article 42 of the CBA covers parking). The CBA, along with several Memoranda of Agreement, can be found in the Agreements page on GESTA’s Website.

Beyond our CBA and other agreements, workers in general and Federal civil servants in particular have rights under US law. Some of the key laws are 

• The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) established the right to collective bargaining and established the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) to manage union elections and to enforce the law. Federal workers were exempted from this law.
• The Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 reorganised the administration of the US Civil Service by splitting the Civil Service Commission into the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MPSB), and extending collective bargaining rights to Federal workers. Title VII of this act addresses labor issues, including creating the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to protect civil servant’s organizing and bargaining rights.

The above is an extremely short summary of Wikipedia articles; I invite anyone who is interested in the details to start by clicking these Wikipedia links. But for now, treat this as background for the first right you should know: your Weingarten rights. Management sends a notification of these rights every year; and while it looks like a lot of the other management spam you receive, these are actually important.

Your Weingarten rights stem from a 1975 Supreme Court decision in the case NRLB v. J. Weingarten, Inc. This decision held that employees in a union bargaining unit have the right to union representation in an investigatory interview, which is any management inquiry where the employee could reasonably believe could result in discipline. The full story is interesting; Wikipedia presents it in some detail. The case itself involves an employee of a food service company, so it initially didn’t cover government employees. The 1978 Civil Service Reform act extended these protections to Federal civil servants. The key concepts that apply to you are:

• You can make a clear request for union representation in the discussion with management, and management is prohibited from punishing that request.
• Management is given these, and only these, choices of responses
  • Grant the request and give you time to consult with your union representative
  • Deny the request and end the questioning
  • Give you the choice of continuing without representation or ending the interview.
•  It is an unfair labor practice to deny the request and force the continuation of the interview.

GESTA has a business card with contact information and suggested language to use when invoking your Weingarten rights on the back:

“If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated, or affect my personal working conditions, I respectfully request that my union representative, officer, or steward be present at this meeting. Without union representation, I choose not to answer questions”

You can find these cards outside GESTA’s conference room (Building 23, Room W131). I encourage you to grab a bunch and to distribute them to your colleagues.

If you need a union representative you can use the contact form on this website, or contact an Executive Committee member directly.

Know your rights, these are your rights.