I have a friend that was working as a production manager a coffee factory. It was a teamster shop. He had a worker that was a total slacker. He had to have a counselling session with him and the union rules said the Shop Steward had to be there too. The night before he was worried about how it was going to get ugly with the Steward defending the slacker.
The morning came and meeting started. The Shop Steward said he would like to speak first. He turned to the slacker and said, "We have dozens of people at the union hall ready to take this job. Everyone around here is sick of picking up the work you don't do. Don't think the Union is going to keep you from getting fired, that's not what we do. I will be more than happy to sign the papers when hands them to me!" My friend was dumbfounded. He just added that if the behavior kept up, he would get a written notice then the third would be dismissal. The slacker stopped his slacking because he found out that the union was there to protect workers, not slackers!