Know Your Rights: The Right to Representation

If, on any occasion, your boss or supervisor calls you into a meeting and you suspect that this meeting could result in some form of discipline against you, you have the right to be accompanied in that meeting by a union steward or representative of your union. These are the rights you have:

1. You have the right to bring along a representative of your union to that meeting.



2. You need to inform your boss that you want a union representative present.



3. If you do not know or are not told what the meeting is about, you have the right to ask whether it may be disciplinary in nature.



4. If the boss or supervisor forbids the union representative from sitting in, ask your boss again in the presence of a witness. Even if the union representative is not allowed to sit in, you have to attend the meeting. However, you have the right to say nothing, no matter how repeatedly or directly you may be asked. Take note of all that you are asked. When the meeting is over, call your union steward or representative immediately.



5. You have the right to talk with your union representative before and even during the meeting.



6. Your union representative has the right to participate and to speak at the meeting, not just to be there simply as a witness.

These rights are called Weingarten rights. They stem from a case decided by the Supreme Court in its 1975 ruling in NLRB v. Weingarten. As with any rights, if we do not use them, we may lose them.