NLRB Regional Office used technicality to cancel election that workers requested and was previously agreed to by union and company
Long Island, NY (March 6, 2025) – Laura Gallo, a senior patient representative at Sun River Health, is asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to overturn a regional NLRB official’s decision blocking her and her coworkers from having a vote to remove officials of the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East union from their workplace. Gallo is receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
Gallo submitted a petition in August 2024 seeking an election to decertify the union. She followed instructions from NLRB agents in ensuring she submitted enough signatures from her coworkers to trigger the vote. However, after the NLRB accepted her petition and the company, union, and Gallo herself had come to an agreement on the election logistics, NLRB Region 29’s Director abruptly announced she was dismissing Gallo’s petition.
This decision – which may have been prompted by backchannel communications between the union and NLRB that Gallo was not party to – was not fully explained until February 13, 2025. In an order, the Regional Director claimed that the union was actually immune to employee-requested decertification attempts because of a non-statutory NLRB policy known as the “contract bar,” which only gives workers a small window to submit decertification petitions while a union contract is in place. The Regional Director issued this order despite the fact that Gallo did file her petition within the contract bar window. However, the order explained that because Gallo had submitted one tranche of signatures in support of her petition just days after this window expired, her petition would be dismissed under the NLRB’s Excel II precedent.
Gallo is now arguing in a Request for Review that the NLRB in Washington, D.C., should overturn this decision and let her and her coworkers’ requested vote go forward. Among other contentions, Gallo’s Request for Review maintains that the NLRB should throw out the Excel II precedent, which prevents decertification petitions from being processed (even when filed on time) when the signatures in support of the petition are not received within the contract bar’s window period.
Long Island Healthcare Worker Painstakingly Gathered Employee Support for Union Ouster Vote Across Large Work Unit – But NLRB Blocked Effort on Technicality
The Request for Review emphasizes that Gallo started the decertification process pro se (without a lawyer) and had to collect signatures from a large work unit which spanned hundreds of workers from Sun River facilities across Long Island. This, the Request for Review explains, “illustrates why the Board’s harsh, one size fits all, rule in Excel II discriminates against petitioners new to NLRB processes who otherwise act diligently and promptly comply with guidance from Board agents.” Gallo points out in her filing that even the Board agents she was working with to file her petition may have been unaware of this restriction.
“Petitioners, and particularly pro se petitioners, should receive the benefit of the doubt when confronted with large and unwieldy bargaining units when it is difficult to estimate the total number of unit members and collect sufficient valid signatures,” the Request for Review argues.
“Contract Bar” Lets Union Officials Insulate Themselves From Workers’ Free Choice
Foundation staff attorneys have aided many workers over the years that union officials have trapped in union ranks using the contract bar gambit. In March 2024, Foundation attorneys helped nurses from multiple locations of Palo Alto (CA) Medical Foundation escape from unwanted International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) union officials who tried to argue that a contract bar should have canceled the nurses’ effort. In late 2021, hundreds of poultry workers at Mountaire Farms in Delaware were finally able to vote themselves free from United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union officials after the union had kept them trapped for almost two years pursuant to a contract bar. Foundation attorneys provided them substantial legal aid at the outset of their effort.
“Ms. Gallo’s case pulls back the curtain to show how stacked NLRB policies are against individual workers,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Using a filing time technicality to snatch away the only opportunity hundreds of Sun River employees will have in years to exercise their right to vote on whether 1199SEIU union officials deserve to remain in control over them is outrageous by itself. But the root of these arbitrary time restrictions is the ‘contract bar’ – a policy which lets union bosses and employers unilaterally enforce contracts that block workers from voting the union out. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of a standard that prioritizes union bosses’ power over workers’ choice.
“President Trump’s new appointees to the NLRB must look to the stories of workers like Ms. Gallo as glaring evidence of why the ‘contract bar’ and similar restrictions need to be removed,” Mix added.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
