The Stewards aren't supposed to be like our personal lawyers. An attorney will do anything you ask them to do, and you will generally pay a ludicrous amount of money to get them to do it.
A Steward's job is simply to uphold the contract and ensure fair and just treatment of the employees by the company and the company's representatives. This means ensuring that each disciplinary step is followed properly, disciplinary action is only taken for offenses stated in the contract or agreed upon on paper by the company and union, that the company's representatives treat each worker with dignity and respect, to help settle disputes that do not have a standard written procedure, and to assist the workers with filing appropriate union-related documents on time and in the correct format.
A Steward's job is not to fight against the company's disciplinary action when it is justified and the position can be properly defended through documentation and the presentation of evidence and logic. If an employee genuinely disregards the limitations of the contract or the fair and logical direction of the company or its representatives, then the contract states that they should receive the appropriate level of disciplinary action according to the severity of the action and the employee's personal history. The Steward's job in this case is of course to check to ensure that every required step was followed, that the company has properly documented and informed the employee of everything they are required to do so, and that the employee is treated with dignity and respect. Beyond this, the only factor that a steward and the company should equally consider is the employee's personal work history. Of the employee has 35 years of perfect attendance and not a single disciplinary note on file, an argument could be made for a less severe punishment, even for serious infractions. Even this should be only lightly considered, and should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The last thing we need is stewards fighting everything, especially completely justifiable disciplinary action. All this does is harden the relationship between the company, the union, and the workers, and increases the workplace tension we all feel. It also allows bad workers to keep there jobs when the legitimately don't deserve them. This decreases the efficiency of the larger working unit of the area, increases the pressure from management to move faster and faster, puts more work on the good worker's backs, and ultimately hurts our customers through delays and bad package handling, causing damage. This damages the company in the long term and hurts us all by decreasing the potential for promotion and raises, and forces a slower growth that delays further investment in labor resources, delays reinvestment in capital, and delays or postpones the expanding of our service area and quality.
Tl,Dr: Stewards that constantly fight for bad employees hurt everyone.
Edit: My phone apparently can't bold things with tags.
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