How to take better notes

I have been asked time and again at stewards' meetings to conduct a class on note taking. My answer is always the same. You don’t need a class in note taking. You simply need to start taking notes.

There are really only a few requirements to taking good notes. Obviously you need the tools -- a pen or pencil and a pad of paper or preferably, a bound or spiral notebook. What is also obvious is that you need to write legibly. You have to be able to read back what you put down on paper.

Note taking contributes to two key skills for the grievance handler: organizing your thoughts and exercising control over the grievance process. Let's take each one of those ideas separately.

Organizing your thoughts

When you write something down -- be it what a witness saw or the questions you plan to use in hearing -- you are beginning the mental process of arranging the issue in a methodical manner that will lead to other questions and ideas.  You will be able to look at those notes and other information you have gathered to establish a chronology, a sequencing of events that will give you a better idea of what happened, what other information you need to fill in the story, and possibly a suggestion of motive. 

You can take the notes of your interview with a witness and compare it with the notes of another witness, a written statement that the company has asked another employee to make, or a document that the employer has generated. A member telling you that they had made the call to the employer that the company denied ever receiving may be verified with a printed phone record, such as cell phone bill, or a company phone log.

Most important of all, you will now have a documented record of events that becomes part of the union file. Six months from now, a union officer can refer back to your notes at a higher-level grievance meeting or at arbitration. Contemporaneous written notes (notes taken at the time of the alleged incident or investigation) carry a great deal of weight, certainly more than the recollections of a witness a year later. 

Controlling the grievance process

The second component of note taking is that it enables the steward or other grievance officer to exercise some control over the grievance process. Have you ever be called into a disciplinary hearing with barely enough time to speak to the accused member beforehand? Compare that to walking into a disciplinary hearing with a set of questions that you will ask and taking as much time to ask them and then write down the responses. Which setting would you prefer to work in?

We need to strive for that second scenario in all of our grievance work. If we can be prepared and have our own script, the member would be better represented and it would put the employer on notice that they cannot abuse the system. That is why we tell all stewards to slow any meeting down so that all relevant questions that you want to ask get asked and that you have time to write down the responses. If someone talks too fast, ask him or her to repeat his or her answer. 

Even better, the 2001 American Airlines agreements included language to include a union officer to be present at all disciplinary hearings (called 29f hearing) solely to take notes while other representatives act as union advocates.

Here are some helpful hints to improve your note taking:

1. Develop a fact sheet that can be filled out with a grievance form so that some of the basic interviewing questions are right in front of you as you ask them. A generic one will be available soon in a new stewards' toolbox on the TWU's Research and Education webpage. The Air Transport Division has a fact sheet on page 4 of its grievance form that can be used as a guide.

2. When you interview a witness or member, make sure that direct quotes are taken down. Put "quotation marks" around them. If Mary tells you that the supervisor called her "a lazy cleaner who spends all her time in the bathroom," duly note it that way. You will certainly be verify her work performance from records and witnesses and how much time she spends in the bathroom and if there are mitigating circumstances such as illness that would necessitate frequent visits to the bathroom. But by taking the quote down word for word you may also be able to establish prejudice on the part of the supervisor.

3.  During an interview go back over the notes you have taken to make sure that your notes are accurate. You can also delve further into the issue just in case your witness remembers more information. Ask them to repeat what they have said.

4.  Take down as much as you can without making judgments as to what is unnecessary. You can always disregard information later.

5.  Date your notes and initial them to authenticate them. Doing so will leave no doubt that they are contemporaneous and not backdated from a later time.

6.  Your fact sheet and notes remain as part of the union record. They are not shared with the company. If you are asked to send them to a union grievance officer at a higher stage of the process, keep copies for yourself. 

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