How to Fill Out a Grievance Form
The forms that need to be filled out if the grievance is not settled informally are the following:
1) Fillable fact sheet. You don’t need to fill everything out, but this form is useful for the grievace committee to use to determine if an issue is a grievable event or not. It also is an important document to keep a record of all the information provided before and during the step meetings to help our CUPE National rep to prepare for arbitration.
2) The fillable grievance form. The information that you must include is:
- case number (that’s the grievance number): The number is composed of the name of the acronym of the university (+ the acronym of the type of employee: PT, TA if there are more than one bargaining unit in that university), the year and the number of the grievance file so far that year. For instance, SMU PT 2024-01 is the grievance number of the SMU PT bargaining unit, and it was the first grievance filed in 2024.
- Employer: the name of the university
- Local no.: 3912
- Supervisor: It depends what step it is. If it is an individual grievance, then you start as step 1 and in this line you will add the Chair’s or Dean’s name. If this individual (employee) grievance is not resolved at the first step meeting, and you still think this is a grievable event, you send the same form but this time as step 2 and to the Vice-President Academic or Provost. If it’s a group or union grievance you start as step 2 and it is sent to the VPAR or Provost. (Check your collective agreement to check who you should send it to.)
- Phone: You don’t need to add phone numbers.
- Steps: The CUPE 3912 SMU and Dal collective agreements just go up to step 2 so you won’t ever need to fill out number 3 unless you are filing a grievance for MSVU.
3) The second page of the form is to add information if the grievance is settled.
4) You should keep in a folder (in your Google Drive) the grievance forms (step 1 and 2) that you submit to the Employer, the Employer’s official responses to the step meetings, all the emails exchanged in relation to this grievance with the Employer, the grievance fact sheet and any other evidence you have.