Workplace grievance

“ In addition, conscientious handling of grievance claims will enhance the union's prestige with employees. Employer interests, for their part, are served by limiting the choice of remedies available to aggrieved employees. And it cannot be said in the normal situation, that contract grievance procedures are inadequate to protect the interests of an aggrieved employee until the employee has attempted to implement the procedures and found them so. ”

“ How can we hope for any improvement in the standard of our entertainments, the manners of our servants or the ways of corporations when no one complains? We are too much in a hurry to follow up a grievance and have it righted. “It doesn’t pay,” “I haven’t got the time,” are phrases with which all such subjects are dismissed. We will sit in over-heated cars, eat vilely cooked food, put up with insolence from subordinates, because it is too much trouble to assert our rights. ”

“ It has been my experience, during the limited time that I have been connected with railroads, that most of the dissatisfaction that arises between employer and employe originates from the overbearing, tyrannical action of some petty foreman, ofttimes a Master Mechanic, and employes censure the officials, and sometimes affairs assume a serious aspect, when, if the employe would go to the proper authority—the President or General Manager—and lay his grievance before them, he would get immediate satisfaction. ”

“ Have you not lived well and been able to save something? Have you not been treated like men? What more do you want? What real grievance have you? None. A scoundrel and a sneak has come here, and for his own purposes aroused your covetousness. But it is unavailing, and,” turning to his colleagues, “these gentlemen will bear me out in what I say,—we will not raise your wages one-tenth of one penny above what they are. We will not be made to suffer for the laxity of other owners, and if within three hours the men are not back at work, they may consider themselves discharged.” ”

“ You can't wonder at that. Our trade hasn't been together many years: and what drove us together? The tyranny of our employers. What has kept us together? The bitter experience of hard work and little pay, whenever we were out of union. Those who now direct the trades are old enough to remember when we were all ground down to the dust by the greedy masters; and therefore it is natural, when a grievance arises, we should be inclined to look to those old offenders for redress in the first instance. Sometimes the masters convince us the fault lies with workmen ”

“ If it is dealt with sympathetically and justly, immediately it is made known, peace, harmony and good-will are readily maintained. On the other hand, if indifference is shown and lack of sympathy, the grievance is nursed and from it grows the industrial disorders which later become so acute and difficult to heal. ”

“ But if a grievance does exist, or dissatisfaction on the part of the employee continues, the matter is carried to the local boss, foreman, or superintendent, with whom in the majority of cases it is amicably and satisfactorily settled. Further appeal is open to the aggrieved employee, either in person or through his representative, to the higher officers and to the president.
If satisfaction is not to be had from the company, [Pg 29] the court of last appeal may be the Industrial Commission of the State, the State Labor Board, or a committee of arbitration. ”

“ As a general rule in cases to which federal law applies, federal labor policy requires that individual employees wishing to assert contract grievances must attempt use of the contract grievance procedure agreed upon by employer and union as the mode of redress. ”

“ Peter Cailler Kohler Swiss Chocolates Co., 2 Cir., 130 F.2d 503, 505-506:
'When all the other workmen in a shop make common cause with a fellow workman over his separate grievance, and go out on strike in his support, they engage in a 'concerted activity' for 'mutual aid or protection,' although the aggrieved workman is the only one of them who has any immediate stake in the outcome. The rest know that by their action each one of them assures himself, in case his turn ever comes, of the support of the one whom they are all then helping ”

“ In most grievances, the people aggrieved are very sensible at the time of the evil they are undergoing; which is not, however, the case with those who suffer from an impure atmosphere. They are, in general, almost unconscious of what they are enduring. This makes it the more desirable, in the case we are considering, that the manufacturer himself, or the government, or the community at large, should be alive to the mischief arising from want of ventilation in these crowded assemblages of men, and to the absolute necessity of providing remedies for it. ”

“ But the grievances of the employes, men and women, had become so aggravated, so galling, that patience deserted them, and they abandoned their employment rather than to submit longer to conditions against which their very souls revolted. Whether they were right or not, let only those judge who comprehend the conditions under which these faithful employes toiled and groaned. Let us avoid sentiment. The bare facts will suffice, and they are haggard enough to excite the sympathy of every good citizen, rich or poor, employer or employed. ”

“ A harassed manager and a deputation of jaded workmen may be really very good fellows and yet find that some comparatively small question raises strong feeling and mutual recrimination, and then leads to rash action resulting in open strife, strikes, and lock-outs, and the judicial proceedings which may be necessary in consequence of them. "A Skilled Labourer," writing in the Quarterly Review, mentions as the first of the four principal grievances of workmen—"the hours are too long." ”

“ The selfishness, cruelty, and arrogance of the capitalist and his agents force the workers into rebellion. The swaggering pomposity and fantastic ceremony of officials fill them with deserving contempt. Their impudence is amazing. I have known a foreman of the shed to attack a man by reason of the decent clothes he had on and forbid him to wear a bowler hat. Not only in the workshop but even at home in his private life and dealings he is under the eye of his employer. ”

“ Which is the worse—the tyranny of the harsh employer who gathers where he has not strawed, or the tyranny of a Trades Union which a man is forced to join, and which compels the best worker to slow down his pace to that of the worst, and frequently compels him to come out on strike over some question upon which he is perfectly satisfied? ”

“ You are considered, rightly, the worst employer of labour here. You are greedy, unscrupulous, and tyrannical. It is men like you who discredit Capital in the eyes of Labour, and make conciliatory dealing between master and man almost an impossibility. We have bolstered you up through a very difficult crisis, sitting here and putting those poor fellows, five of whom are infinitely more honest than you are, quite undeservedly in the wrong, and imperilling our immortal souls by whitewashing such employers as you. ”

“ Those are the things that make an employer a nervous wreck. He’s got to keep it going. I tell you there’s advantages in being a wage-slave and having the wages coming—”
“But, Mr. Fein, if it’s just as hard on the employers as it is on the employees, then the whole system is bad.” ”

“ They understand also that if we want wage-workers to desist from strikes, and especially if we want the employés of railroad and telegraph corporations to recognize, on their part, a duty to the public forbidding them to resort for the redress of their grievances to sudden stoppages of work, we must put within their reach for the righting of their wrongs another means more rational and more efficient. ”

“ I can conceive of nothing more disruptive of congenial labor relations than arming employee, union and management with the potential for 'smarting' one another with exemplary damages. Even without the punitive element, a damage action has an unfavorable effect on the climate of labor relations. ”

“ And apparently the workers can only improve their condition by strikes, by suffering—it seems to be the only manner in which they can convince the employers that the conditions are bad. It isn't the employers' fault. ”

“ If labor has to compete with crime, the hand of industry with the bloody hand, where is the hope on which honesty is to hinge and work its way through the world? The whole can be told in a few words: While these sixty savages are here being employed in every department of manual labor, thus taking the bread from the mouths of dependent women and children, it is productive of suffering in our midst, whilst those advanced in life look in vain for a support to their sons, whose hands are tied by these savage oppressors. ”

“ Such associations of labor manifest themselves in collective bargaining, in an effort to secure better working and living conditions, in providing machinery whereby grievances may easily and without prejudice to the individual be taken up with the management. ”

“ Positive evidence is at hand that a few such employers have themselves directed the work of incendiaries, thugs, and rioters. With such amazing evidence as we have recently had concerning the systematically lawless work of the Manufacturers' Association, it is impossible to free the employers of all personal responsibility for the outrages committed by their criminal agents. There are many different ways in which violence benefits the employer, and it may even be said that in all cases it is only to the interest of the employer. ”

“ And the workman must keep silent and bend the knee, and clench his fist under his frock: for the employer has the work, and only too happy is he who can obtain the favor of his swindles. And because society has not yet found a way to prevent, repress, and punish this odious grinding process, so spontaneous, so ingenuous, so disengaged from all superior impulse, it is attributed to social constraint. ”

“ Suppose that an individual working man or woman went to an employer and said: "I make, in my capacity as wage worker in this factory, so many dollars worth of wealth every day and justice demands that you give me at least half." The employer would probably have him removed to the nearest lunatic asylum. He would consider him too dangerous a criminal to let loose on the community! It is neither sympathy nor justice that makes an appeal to the employer. But it is power. If a committee can go to the employer with this ultimatum: "We represent all the men and women in this shop. ”

“ The solidarity of the wage-workers incomplete, even many of these may regard the fate of the strikers with indifference. In such situation, a strike of the wage-workers may be made to appear to all except those closely concerned as an assault on the bulwarks of society.
But what are the bulwarks of society directly arrayed against striking wage-workers? They are a ring of employers, a ring of officials enforcing class law made by compliant representatives at the bidding of shrewd employers, and a ring of public sentiment makers—largely professional men whose hopes lie with wealthy patrons. ”

“ Justice BUTLER and I cannot accept the view that a 'labor dispute' emerges whenever an employer fails to respond to a communication from A, B, and C-irrespective of their race, character, reputation, fitness, previous or present employment suggesting displeasure because of his choice of employees and their expectation that in the future he will not fail to select men of their complexion. ”

“ Employers under criticism behave like the rest of us. They put the best foot forward, call attention to the highest wages, direct the visitor to best conditions, precisely, as upon the other side, labor points to every haggard fact upon the scene; wretched housing, indecencies and abuse of foremen; petty personal discriminations, and every item of lowest and most uncertain labor income.
From socialist papers reporting the Lawrence strike, I cut for weeks their assertions about the wage scale. ”

“ By this neglect of the public, often aggravated by individual selfishness and ingratitude, our workmen are placed in a deplorable situation.
Some of them, notwithstanding their incessant toil, lead a life of privations, and die before their time cursing the social system that rides over them. Others find a temporary oblivion of their ills in destructive intoxication. Others again—in great number—having no interest, no advantage, no moral or physical inducement to do more or better, confine themselves strictly to just that amount of labor which will suffice to earn their wages. ”

“ There must be a just reason for the strike. Too little pay, too long hours, brutal treatment, unsafe or unsanitary conditions constitute genuine grievances for what may be called a defensive strike, which presupposes injustice in the part of the employer. On the other hand an ameliorative strike does not presuppose an employer’s injustice, but consists essentially in the worker’s attempt to better conditions, e.g., a better salary, shorter working hours, etc. ”

“ He spoke as if this consequence were so entirely logical, that neither employers nor employed had any right to complain if it became their fate: the employer to turn aside from the race he could no longer run, with a bitter sense of incompetency and failure—wounded in the struggle—trampled down by his fellows in their haste to get rich—slighted where he was once honoured—humbly asking for, instead of bestowing, employment with a lordly hand. ”

“ If it be an error, that the woes, which come with ever-returning tide-like flood to overwhelm the workmen in our manufacturing towns, pass unregarded by all but the sufferers, it is at any rate an error so bitter in its consequences to all parties, that whatever public effort can do in the way of legislation, or private effort in the way of merciful deeds, or helpless love in the way of "widow's mites," should be done, and that speedily, to disabuse the work-people of so miserable a misapprehension. ”

“ If a striker lost his temper and talked as he ought not to talk, this latter specimen was always ready to encourage him; for whatever promised trouble for others promised profitable pastime for the criminal. If the real workers could keep clear of this class, as well as the idle, loafing element in their own profession, ninety per cent. of the alleged labor outrages would never be committed. ”