Abstract
For labor educators, steward training is arguably the most-requested and most-performed workshop. We each use an array of materials and handouts collected over the years; supplementing these are “steward handbooks” published by most international unions, as well as some fine independently developed manuals.
Based on the “service” model that unions embraced decades ago, steward training has focused on “enforcing the contract” through “grievance handling.” Accordingly, lesson plans have emphasized these aspects, teaching stewards that their job is to file grievances to address the complaints of individual workers.
The folks at Labor Notes have never accepted this paradigm, and thus The Steward’s Toolbox does not contain any sections on “how to write a grievance.” This book fills the critical vacuum left by traditional steward training and focuses instead on developing the steward as a shop floor activist in the broadest sense. As the editor says in the introduction, “shop floor activists are the raw material for labor’s revival” (p. 1), and this book clearly aims to inform and inspire those shop floor activists—not to play contract technician or pseudo-lawyer—but to challenge management’s power in the workplace and beyond.
The Steward’s Toolbox is a collection of 55 short articles previously published in Labor Notes magazine in the “Steward’s Corner” column. David Cohen and several other United Electrical Workers Union (UE) authors have a number of contributions, as do labor lawyer Robert Schwartz and union activists Ellen David Friedman, Paul Krehbiel, and Tiffany Ten Eyck. These and other authors provide us with a book that is fundamentally practical and militant.
Articles are grouped into eight chapters: “Steward Skills,” “Bargaining,” “Running for Office, Running the Local,” “Communicating with Members and the Public,” “Organizing from the Bottom Up,” “Defending Everyone,” “Coalition Building,” and “Strikes and Contract Campaigns.” The chapter titles themselves make obvious that this is a departure from traditional steward education.
The “Steward Skills” chapter comes closest to traditional steward training, but the selections focus on grievance handling as a part of the larger workplace struggle. Advice and examples are given for insubordination cases, past practice, safety, disparate treatment, and much more. Added to these are articles on using shop floor power to resolve grievances, such as David Cohen and Judy Atkins’ “Action on the Job” and Ellen David Friedman’s “Turning an Issue into a Campaign.”
Most steward training would stop there. Instead, this toolbox moves on to “bargaining,” featuring articles on pensions, mid-term concessions, workplace technology, and more, all of which recognize the essential role that activist stewards play in building power for negotiations. Subsequent chapters continue the focus on making the union steward a whole activist, not just a contract cop. Militant stewards will learn how to run for office and lead their union, how to build alliances in the community, how to develop campaign communications, and how to build power among workers who vary in race, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.
Of particular interest and usefulness are the articles directly related to workplace organizing, most of them in the chapter “Organizing from the Bottom Up.” These include Paul Krehbiel’s articles on building stewards’ councils, and several articles on union-building without dues checkoff and in “Right to Work” environments. Recent developments in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana make these particularly timely.
The book is probably too text-heavy for more than limited direct classroom use. A labor educator could bring a favorite article or two into a steward workshop for reading, discussion, and analysis. Despite this limitation, stewards should certainly get copies of this book for their future use and study. The Steward’s Toolbox is of immense value to stewards and to labor educators seeking to reorient their steward training toward leadership development and the shifting of workplace power.