In response to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) taking a step on April 15, 2015, towards allowing union officials to force nonmember workers in Right to Work states to pay fees for union contract grievance-processing, Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, issued the following statement:

As Right to Work expands across the country, it is unfortunately not surprising that the Obama NLRB is now actively working to undermine the 25 state Right to Work laws. Its “call for briefs” signals this NLRB’s intention to reverse 60 years of Board precedent to give union bosses an unprecedented tool to eviscerate employees’ Right to Work protections.

The fact is that union officials choose monopoly bargaining control over all workers in a workplace even though they are free to instead negotiate a members-only contract. And union officials continue to do so because they enjoy and often depend on the power derived from that monopoly. The monopoly union contract and any grievance over its enforcement is the direct result of union bosses’ decision to impose their so-called “representation” on independent-minded employees who, because of their status as nonmembers, have lost all ability to influence the contents of the union contract that controls the outcome of any grievance.

The real solution would be to strip union officials of their monopoly bargaining powers that let them impose unwanted “representation” on unwilling workers, but as long as union bosses are empowered to force nonmembers under their contacts, Right to Work laws should continue to protect workers from being forced to subsidize that unwanted union boss monopoly representation, including through the union-imposed grievance process.