Do the senior stewards still have that office in TBA, wear suits to work and have allocated car parking spaces in the executive car park?
Is senior stewardship still a route to an executive level position in Personnel (or is that Human Resources now-a-days?)
Our own shop steward was voted EETPU senior steward by his fellow stewards. We only ever saw him at work once every two years when he came to ask for us to vote him in again. One day someone asked him to explain what he had done for TBJ Electrical/Instrument "B" Shift in the past six years and he couldn't give a straight answer. So we turned him back into an electrician. Instantly.
The moral is that the union representation you get is the union representation you put up with. If you're not satisfied throw the stewards out and put in people who will do what they are told instead of imagining that they are part of the company's management team.
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Through difficulties to the cinema