What are Weingarten Rights?
Weingarten Rights (1975 Supreme Court decision) give employees in unionized workplaces the right to advocate for themselves and call for their Union representative, if and when they may be disciplined. Screen Actors Guild: American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) explains in this 6-min. video.
When Weingarten Rights are invoked, it gives the worker time to connect with their Union representative. The representative can talk with the worker in advance to help them prepare, listen and take notes during the meeting, ask clarifying questions, and advocate for them.
How to Invoke Them?
Just say, read, or show these words:
“If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated, or affect my personal working conditions, I respectfully request that my union representative be present.”
Download the Know Your Rights card from our California Teacher’s Association and save it in your wallet.
History: Here’s to Leura Collins
Courage at Work
We can thank a Texas Union woman Leura Collins for her courage and persistence for this right. When we invoke it in our workplaces today, we continue a legacy of labor movement to improve our working lives.
Collins worked lunch counters and take-out in the Weingarten’s grocery store chain in the 1960s and 70s. The last store she worked at was in Houston, where a Weingarten’s store was the site of a sit-in that desegregated the city in 1960. The place was woven into the culture.
Inside the store where Collins worked in the 1970s, dynamics were grim. Management had hired a company to monitor employee theft and workers were being watched as if they had done something bad, whether or not they had.
In 1972, she was called into an investigative meeting with management and accused of theft for what turned out to be an employee meal. She put 1 dollar in for the register for it, yet used a $2.98 box because they were out of smaller to-go boxes.
During the meeting with management, Collins was vigorously questioned. She asked for her Union representative multiple times and was denied. She broke down and cried, yet they persisted. Finally they concluded the meeting, telling her to keep it between them and not share what happened with anyone else. She did not do this though, she told her Union.
Together, they took the issue all the way up until it got to the Supreme Court. Thank you Leura Collins for your work and your Union too, which today is a part of the United Food and Commercial Workers.