Recently, I have had a couple of interactions with Union members that have concerned me, and so I thought that I would take the time to address some of them. These concerns center around trust and recognition.
The trust part comes from many of you believing what the supervisors and managers tell you before believing your Union Representatives. I can not tell you how many times me and Mr. Marchel Smiley, and other Union Representatives have been accused of agreeing to something that we have no knowledge of. Case in point. During the inauguration the Environmental Services Department at the Washington Hospital Center implemented a 12 hour work day for three days. The members were told that the Union, more specifically me, had agreed to such a change. Naturally, I was inundated with questions about this when I went to the Hospital. The biggest question was how could I have agreed to such a thing. The truth was no such agreement had been reached, nor formally discussed. If some of the members did not have trust in the Union, this 12 day shift would have been implemented. The members who had trust in the Union called me to find out if it was true. They did not believe that their Union would agree to this without notifying them. And, they were right.
Because of these members we were able to rectify this problem and the Hospital had to make the 12 hour shift voluntary. Many times when a department wish to implement something they tell you that the Union was involved and knows about it. Don’t just take their word for it, call the Union or contact your Shop Steward to make sure it is true.
Dan Fields
