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Getting Your Grievant to Maintain
Confidentiality
In our last article, we addressed the Job Rep
Creed of MAINTAINING CONFIDENTIALLY and how it can adversely
affect everyone if it is not honored. Likewise, the grievant
must also adhere to maintaining confidentiality, or in other
words, keeping his or her mouth shut. For the Job Rep this
can be dubbed as “Mission Impossible!”
In many instances, by the time the Job Rep is
contacted for assistance, the situation for the grievant has
progressed to the point where it has consumed the grievant’s
life.
In some cases, it can and actually does cause
physical and emotional side effects. This is one of the
ultimate challenges for the Job Rep to deal with, as by this
time, the grievant usually isn’t coping well and just wants
the situation to go away at any cost – an extremely
dangerous situation.
Once the Job Rep has a good grasp of the situation he/she
needs to make an assessment of the grievant’s emotional
state and his/her support system. It is not uncommon to
discover that the grievant has little or no support
regardless of marital status or community involvement.
Sometimes, the grievant perceives the only
source for support to be from co-workers and goes out of his
or her way to garner support and/or sympathy. Here are two
cases to show how this can adversely affect desired
outcomes:
#1 - The Case of the E-Mail Big Mouth:
John was upset because Sue was promoted to
become his supervisor. John was incensed and let everyone in
his work unit know exactly so.
He wanted to file a grievance and contacted
his Job Rep. The rep, after analyzing the facts, told John
he didn’t have a case.
John made every effort to avoid Sue to the
point of only communicating via e-mail. Sue, being no dummy,
attempted to reach out to John without success and
ultimately became very frustrated. The e-mails became more
and more intense between the two.
John, started to forward them to his Job Rep
in the hopes of finding something to file a grievance over.
What the Job Rep didn’t know is that John was blind carbon
copying (bcc) co-workers both within and outside of his work
unit in an attempt to discredit the Job Rep and portray Sue
as a villain. As a result, the situation was a source for
jokes about John not only from his co-workers, but also
management,
as well.
John ultimately was reassigned to another
supervisor, but carries a label of being “less than a
perfect employee” to this day.
#2 - The Case of the Vindictive Grievant :
Tim just couldn’t seem to do anything right
to satisfy his boss, Steve. Tim was seasoned enough to have
the good sense to keep records of conversations between
himself and Steve.
All of Tim’s co-workers (in his
classification) were experiencing the same type of treatment
from Steve and tried to lay low. Steve had been around for a
long time and had been getting away with this behavior for
years and since Tim was the target, they could breathe a
little easier.
Ultimately, Tim was charged with
insubordination. At the pre-disciplinary meeting, the Staff
Rep was able to paint a convincing portrait of Steve as
being a dinosaur in terms of his management style through
data provided by the agency such as turnover rates, new hire
lag times and disparate treatment of employees depending on
their classification. This caused the agency to launch its
own investigation of Steve.
The Staff Rep told Tim that Steve was going
to be investigated and to just chill out and keep his mouth
shut.
Unfortunately, Tim did the opposite and saw
this as a means of being vindicated and contacted any
co-worker he trusted within the region and encouraged them
to speak out. So, the word spread like wildfire and Tim’s
co-workers didn’t wait to be contacted by the HR
investigator, but rather sought him out.
The results of the inquiry were essentially that yes, it
appeared that Steve’s management style was somewhat
draconian, but it was obvious that this was a mass effort to
get even with him. Thus, a pretty solid case was
compromised.
What to Do?
Remember, in most cases the situation has
consumed the grievant. The Job Rep needs to:
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Assess where the grievant is in terms of
support – family, friends, co-workers and church. Many
times they feel they have no one to turn to for various
reasons.
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Encourage the grievant to seek assistance
from the Washington State Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
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And, if you discover that the grievant
has no support system in place, then make yourself
available to be a sounding board until a support network
can be established. This can be a drain on your time and
energy, but remember, you’re dealing with someone who
needs not only help, but a friend, during this low point
in
their life.
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