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two years ago the union accepted into the contract a Tobacco-Free Workplace Policy that bans all forms of tobacco from company property. Essentially employees can leave their tobacco products in their cars, but cannot use it on the premisis - including the company-owned parking lot. Discipline for this was agreed upon as a two-step process... 1st offense, three days suspension with referral to EAP, 2nd offense, termination. We recently had a supervisor walk up on an employee with noteable smoke in the air and the observed as the employee apparently quickly snubbed out the cigarette and threw it in an open wet-pulp vat.
The supervisor gave a complete, descriptive write up, and the employee was given a written warning for violation of the policy. the union is grieving the incident saying the supervisor did not recover the cigarette butt for proof of the violation. Not even going into the potential loss of product the cigarette butt contaminated or the fire hazard if the employee threw it elsewhere, we believe the recovery of the cigarette butt is unreasonable and have given our supervisors proper training and authority to act as company agents in these manners. Has anyone had any experience with something like this and how we should proceed or if there are any resolved cases like this?
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I meant to say the employee was given a suspension (as agreed) not the written warning.
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