How to file a grievance (and the deadlines that matter)

A grievance can be lost before anyone argues it. Filing windows in collective agreements are short, and a grievance filed a day late can be dismissed no matter how strong it is.

This guide is for anyone filing a grievance at work through their union, and for the new steward helping them.

What counts as a grievance

A grievance is a formal claim that the employer broke the rules it agreed to. The Canadian Union of Public Employees defines it as "a complaint about something the employer did or did not do": a violation of the collective agreement, a violation of employment law, or a change in the way the employer applies contract language (CUPE Steward Handbook, p. 15).

A grievance has to point to a rule that was broken. A Teamsters guide for stewards puts it bluntly: "A grievance cannot remedy every injustice. It can only remedy a violation of the contract" (Connecticut Teamsters grievance guide, p. 8). That does not mean unfair treatment is out of reach. Harassment and discrimination articles, employment law and past practice can all cover conduct that looks like plain unfairness, so bring it to your steward and let them find the rule. The first question in any grievance is which article, law or established practice was violated.

If you do not have a union, this process does not apply to you. Your route is your employer's complaint policy or a government labour or human rights agency.

Grievances come in three common types. An individual grievance is filed for one employee, called the grievor in Canada and the grievant in the US. A group grievance covers several members affected the same way by the same action. A policy grievance (also called a union grievance) challenges something that could affect everyone under the agreement. Grievance procedures go back a long way: the first flight attendant contract, in 1946, already had one.

How to file a grievance: six steps

1. Keep working, unless it is unsafe or illegal. The standing rule is "work now, grieve later". If you refuse an order you think breaks the contract, you can be disciplined for the refusal even if you were right about the contract. CUPE's handbook lists the exceptions: an order to do something "illegal, unsafe, or unhealthy" (p. 23). Refusing unsafe work has its own procedure, and you need to say clearly that safety is the reason.
2. Write it down the same day. Details fade quickly, and a grievance is built from them. Record the six Ws stewards are trained to ask for: who was involved and who saw it, what happened, where, when (date, time and shift), why it violates the agreement, and what you want the employer to do to fix it. Keep copies of schedules, pay stubs, emails and texts.
3. Tell your steward now, not next week. In most agreements the steward files the grievance for you, and in almost all of them the union decides how far it goes. Some agreements, including those in the Canadian federal public service, have you present the grievance yourself with union support. Either way, the steward is your first call. The clock usually starts on the day of the event or the day you learned about it, not the day you decided to act.
4. Find the article and the deadline. Two things in your collective agreement decide what happens next: the article the employer violated, and the grievance article that sets the time limit and the steps. Read both with your steward.
5. Put it in writing. Many agreements start with an informal conversation with the supervisor. Have your steward with you, and do not assume the filing clock stops while you talk. Unless your agreement says otherwise, it keeps running. The written grievance itself is short. It states the grievor's name, the date, the article or articles violated, the date of the violation, a brief description, and the remedy sought.
6. Follow it through the steps. Keep a copy of what was filed and note the date. Each step in the procedure has its own deadline for the employer's answer and for the union's appeal to the next step.

On the remedy: ask for everything that would put you back where you would have been. Many union forms ask that the grievor be "made whole", wording meant to catch lost pay and benefits you did not think to list. List the ones you know anyway.

The deadlines that matter

There is no general deadline for grievances. Your collective agreement sets it, and the numbers vary widely. Here are four real examples: three agreements and one local's guide for its members.

View as table

Agreement	Deadline to file	Clock starts
UFCW Local 951 (member guide)	"Most commonly" 10 days	Check your contract
US Postal Service / APWU	14 days	When the employee or union learned, or could reasonably have learned, of the issue
UPS / Teamsters, Western Region Supplement	20 calendar days	The "known occurrence" giving rise to the grievance
Canadian federal public service, PA group	25 days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and designated paid holidays	When the grievor is notified or first becomes aware

Three details in the deadline clause change the answer.

Here is how much the first detail matters. Say a member is passed over for overtime on Friday, October 2, 2026, and the grievance article reads like this (a composite, not any one union's language):

"A grievance shall be submitted in writing within ten (10) working days of the occurrence giving rise to the grievance."

Composite example of a typical time-limit clause

Counting Monday to Friday, leaving out the day it happened and skipping Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, October 12 (if the agreement excludes holidays), the tenth working day is Monday, October 19. If the clause said ten calendar days, the deadline would be October 12 itself, a holiday, so in practice you would file by Friday, October 9. Same number, more than a week apart.

If you miss the deadline

Assume a late grievance is a lost grievance. The Connecticut Teamsters guide calls an untimely grievance "procedurally deficient and therefore subject to dismissal" (p. 2), and CUPE warns that in some agreements missing a time limit "will mean that you lose the grievance" (p. 17).

That is why both guides give stewards the same advice: when the deadline is close, file first and investigate after. In CUPE's words, "It is much easier to withdraw a grievance than try to file one after the time limit has expired" (p. 24).

In parts of Canada there is a narrow safety valve. Under Ontario's Labour Relations Act, 1995, s. 48(16), an arbitrator may extend a time limit in the grievance procedure if there are "reasonable grounds for the extension" and the other side "will not be substantially prejudiced", unless the collective agreement says that subsection does not apply. For federally regulated private-sector workplaces such as airlines, banks and telecoms, the Canada Labour Code, s. 60(1.1), gives arbitrators a similar power. Federal public servants have their own statute and board. Neither provision is a right to file late. It is a request an arbitrator can refuse, made after the employer has already objected. Treat the date in your contract as the deadline.

If you are called into a meeting

Grievances often start with a disciplinary meeting, so know this before you walk in.

In the United States, most private-sector union-represented employees have what are called Weingarten rights, after the Supreme Court's 1975 decision in NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc. You can ask for your union representative at an investigatory interview that you reasonably believe could lead to discipline. You have to ask. The National Labor Relations Board notes that employers are not required to tell you the right exists (NLRB). The right comes from the National Labor Relations Act. Airline and rail workers and public employees are covered by different laws, so check your contract.

In Canada this right generally comes from your collective agreement. The federal public service agreement, for example, entitles an employee called to a disciplinary hearing "to have, at his or her request, a representative of the Alliance attend the meeting", with two days' notice where practicable (PA agreement, cl. 17.02). Check what yours says before you need it.

What happens after you file

The grievance moves up a ladder, with more senior people on each side at each step. The US Postal Service procedure is a clear example: the employee and supervisor discuss it at Step 1; a union official meets a postal official at Step 2; a national union representative meets an area official at Step 3; and Step 4 is binding arbitration before a neutral arbitrator (APWU).

Most grievances end early. The United Electrical workers' steward guide says "the first two steps of the grievance procedure are where most grievances get settled" (UE). Even among cases that reach Canada's federal public sector labour board, 71.1% of the labour relations files closed in 2024–25 were withdrawn before a decision, and settlements made up 46.5% of those withdrawals (FPSLREB annual report).

Arbitration is slow. In cases handled through the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in fiscal 2023, an average of 124 days passed between the grievance being filed and the request for an arbitrator panel, and another 335 days between that request and the award (FMCS). Taken together that is roughly 15 months for the cases that went all the way to an award, which is a good reason to build a strong file for the first step.

If your union decides not to pursue it

In most workplaces the union decides which grievances go forward and how far. CUPE's handbook says so directly: "the union 'owns' grievances" (p. 25). Ontario's labour board tells members the same thing: the decision on whether a grievance goes to arbitration "is made by the union and not a grievor" (OLRB Information Bulletin No. 12).

What you are owed is a fair decision. The union cannot act in a way that is arbitrary, discriminatory or in bad faith. That is the duty of fair representation, and it appears in nearly the same words in the Canada Labour Code (s. 37), Ontario's Labour Relations Act (s. 74) and the US Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Vaca v. Sipes. In the US the duty covers everyone in the bargaining unit, "whether members of the union or not" (NLRB).

If your grievance is turned down, ask for the reasons and ask about your union's internal appeal. If you believe the decision was arbitrary, discriminatory or made in bad faith, you can complain to the labour board. Those complaints have deadlines too: 90 days at the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which covers the federally regulated private sector, and six months for a charge at the US National Labor Relations Board if your workplace is under the National Labor Relations Act. The boards look at how the union made its decision. They do not re-argue the grievance.

The whole thing depends on finding the clause

Every one of the six steps runs through the collective agreement: whether there was a violation, which article, how many days, which kind of days, what the next step is. A steward who knows the agreement cold can answer those in a minute. A member reading a 300-page agreement for the first time, the night after being sent home, usually cannot.

That lookup is the part of this we work on. AviChat lets a member ask their own agreement a question in plain language and get the answer cited to the article and section, so they arrive at the steward's door with the clause in hand and days to spare. Deciding whether to grieve, and how to win it, stays with the steward, a distinction we wrote about in Will AI replace union reps?

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Your collective agreement and your union's advice govern your situation, and the deadlines in your agreement may be shorter than any shown here.