The rights of employees to the presence of a union steward during investigatory interviews was announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975 in NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc. Since that case involved a clerk being investigated by the Weingarten Company, these rights have become known as Weingarten Rights. An investigatory inverview occurs when a supervisor questions an employee to obtain information that could be used as a basis for dicipline or asks an employee to defend his or her conduct.
If an employee has a reasonable belief that discipline or other adverse consequences may result from what he or she says, the employee is allowed to ask for and must be granted access to a union steward before the interview can continue. These are your rights and you should be ready to assert them. For more information on your Weingarten rights visit the AFT CT website.