"...Mr. President, don't take your anger out on me - I'm just a silly girl..."

[Pototan]

58. oh, I never would use that line

:Thank you for your kind attention to this matter." Was a way of demonstrating that we're both just doing our jobs, union and management.

Too often, the managers would take a grievance personally and that would make it more difficult to settle. And by not settling, the grievance took longer and would become more expensive for both sides.

The way a contract works, is that I need to convince the other side I'm correct. If I couldn't, we would need to go to arbitration and then I need a lawyer. In order to do my job, I needed to make sure the employee (union member) was satisfied with thee outcome and achieve that without arbitration. Very few instances were black and white, where the member was right and the manager wrong, or vice-versa. That grey area was within the settlement and I needed the other side to keep an open mind.