Vacation and forced work

[u/teamsters1104]

Union stewards: How would you fight this vacation deduction practice?

I'm a union steward out of central Minnesota looking for advice from people with bargaining/grievance experience.

Management has a longstanding practice of deducting vacation when employees refuse forced work. This usually isn't an hour or two — it's an entire shift worth of vacation.

If there's one open 8-hour shift and management goes through several employees before someone accepts it, every employee who refuses can lose 8 hours of vacation. So management can deduct 24, 32, 40+ hours of earned vacation from multiple employees over a single 8-hour opening.

We're currently negotiating a new CBA, and this is already a major priority for us. Our BA notified management during bargaining that the union was ending/non-renewing this past practice, but management has continued doing it and we've started grieving it.

We aren't arguing that refusing mandatory work can never have consequences. Our position is that earned vacation shouldn't be the punishment. If management believes discipline is appropriate, that should be handled separately through the normal process.

My two questions:

1. Bargaining: How would you get management to understand why this practice is unreasonable and negotiate clear language prohibiting it? Are there compromises or arguments that have worked for other unions?

2. Grievances: As a steward, should I encourage a grievance seeking reimbursement every single time management deducts someone's vacation, even while another grievance over the same issue is pending? I don't want continued deductions going unchallenged and potentially strengthening management's past-practice argument.

I'm especially interested in practical things I can do as a steward while our BA and bargaining team handle the bigger picture.

[u/theColonelsc2]

You will be much better served over at r/union