My grievance against the medical discharge in fact took six years. As a result, at the very end there were recommendations by the external review board to make changes to the grievance process. They were saying this person was off almost six years while this was going on, and if they would have had shorter timelines, fewer stages in the grievance process, perhaps this could have been resolved a lot earlier.
Basically, when a grievance goes on that long, it becomes so polarized: them against me. It's like anything. Then it becomes very difficult to return to work. Basically, it was shortened down to about three stages, and each stage had an opportunity to be mediated. It's more efficient now; however, there's still opportunity for further abuses with regard to the internal process of who's involved in a grievance and who has power in the grievance.