PROTECTING THE
AMERICAN DREAM.

• Join a union.
• Attend a union meeting on your own time.
• Talk to a union organizer.
• Declare yourself a union supporter.
• Assist in forming a union.

• Threaten you with discharge or punishment if you engage in union activity.
• Threaten to shut down business if workers form a union.
• Prevent you from soliciting members during non-working hours.
• Question you about union matters, union meetings, or union supporters.
• Ask how you or other workers intend to vote in an election.
• Ask whether you belong to a union or have signed up to join a union.
• Transfer or assign you to a less desirable work assignment because of your union activity.
• Threaten to terminate your benefits because you unionize.
• Threaten a layoff or loss of jobs in retaliation for voting for a union.

If a union could teach only one thing to its members, it should be their “Weingarten rights”—the right of unionized workers to have a Shop Steward or someone else from the union present if they find themselves in situations where they might be disciplined.

Many workers crumble in the face of questioning by their supervisor or other management figure. They get rattled, start explaining, making excuses, apologizing, and often end up giving the employer ammunition to do whatever they want. They become like the suspects you see in police shows on television: they “fess up” to things that perhaps never even happened or say things in such a way that they worsen the problem rather than help resolve the issue.

With few exceptions, workers across North America enjoy the legal right to have a Shop Steward or other union representative present if they find themselves in any situation with management—a conversation, a discussion, an interrogation—that could lead to disciplinary action. For private sector and federal government workers in the U.S., this protection is called Weingarten Rights, named after a 1975 Supreme Court decision. Most state workers and workers throughout Canada enjoy pretty much the same guarantees.

But unlike Miranda rights, which police are supposed to inform criminal suspects about their rights, employers do not have to tell employees about their Weingarten rights. Workers must ask for them.

The rights do not extend to meetings where no questioning is involved, such as when one-way communication from the supervisor to the worker occurs. Weingarten also does not extend to a discussion about job performance without a threat of discipline.

At the same time, workers do have the right to call Weingarten rights into play if they have any reasonable expectation that a disciplinary action may result from the meeting. The key word here is “may.”

If there is the slightest concern that the session could bring about discipline, the worker has the right to ask for union help even though the supervisor may not be intending to take such action. For example, if other workers have been disciplined for similar alleged situations, the worker being called in has had a previous discussion with the supervisor about discipline, or the worker is working under the threat of a performance warning letter, any of these situations can cause a worker to think that discipline may be an outcome of the meeting.

• The employee must make a clear request for union representation before or during the interview. The worker cannot be punished for making such 
a request.
• The employer must either grant the request and delay questioning until the union person arrives, deny the request but end the interview at once, or give the worker the choice of going ahead without representation or ending the interview immediately.
• An employer who denies the worker’s request for representation and continues to ask questions is committing an unfair labor practice. The worker can legally refuse to answer questions in such circumstances.

• Once the Shop Steward arrives, the supervisor must inform them about the subject matter of the interview and the type of misconduct 
under discussion.
• The Shop Steward and the worker should be allowed to talk privately before the questioning begins.
• The Shop Steward can speak during the interview and, if necessary, ask that questions be clarified. The Shop Steward cannot bargain over the purpose of the interview.
• The Shop Steward can advise the worker on how to answer any or all questions or object to improper questioning, and the Shop Steward has the right, once the questioning is ended, to provide additional information. The Shop Steward cannot tell workers not to answer questions or to give false answers.