UFCW stewards are on the front line of member representation. Every day, thousands of UFCW stewards are standing up to help coworkers with everyday issues at work:
- Enforcing union contract provisions and identifying safety and health hazards; and
- Participating in chain meetings to coordinate bargaining strategies with union brothers and sisters from other locals.
In effect, stewards are leading the fight for workers’ rights. “I got involved in the union because I couldn’t stand seeing how supervisors treated my coworkers,” says Maribel Cervantes, a steward at the Excel beef operation in Dodge City, Kan., and UFCW Local 2 member. “You don’t need to know everything to be a steward. It only takes love for your coworkers and pride in your job.” Maribel, along with nearly a dozen other UFCW stewards from across the country, recently attended a training workshop at UFCW International headquarters in Washington. The workshop focused on developing steward skills to recognize on-the-job safety and health risks, then take the appropriate action so that companies correct them. The “Train the Trainer” workshop also focused on providing stewards with skills to go back to their workplaces and share information with coworkers on how to become more involved with solving workplace concerns.
Stewards are not only involved in actions to protect rights at work, they also play a leading role in planning bargaining strategy, and helping coordinate negotiation tactics for members nationwide who work for the same employer. Through chain meetings, UFCW stewards meet with other stewards and UFCW support staff to exchange experience and devise a plan to approach national employers.
“Coordinating negotiations in the Hormel chainhas been very beneficial for us,” says Dean Shinn, the walking steward at the company’s Knoxville, Iowa, plant and member of Davenport, Iowa, Local 431. Dean recently attended a chain meeting in Kansas City, Mo., along with stewards from all over the country, who work at the major food processing, manufacturing and meatpacking chains. “It’d be ludicrous for our plant of 105 people to try to negotiate by ourselves with a company like Hormel that has more than 8,000 employees,” he says. “With the growth of our major employers into nationwide operators, bargaining plant by plant just can’t happen any more. The chain meetings give us a chance to share information and coordinate tactics with brothers and sisters in other plants.”