In a Washington Examiner op-ed published June 24, 2022 (“Biden’s NLRB serves union officials, not workers”), Foundation President Mark Mix offered up the plight of a group of brick makers of Indiana as an example of how the NLRB’s policies destroy worker free choice in the name of “stability” for union bosses:

The employees at U.S. Brick in Mooresville, Indiana, have had enough of the Teamsters union. They made that clear with a union “disaffection” petition, signed by more than two-thirds of the workforce.

The National Labor Relations Act gives workers the right to request a union decertification election to remove a union from their workplace, but only under certain conditions.

Those conditions are under the control of the National Labor Relations Board, a five-member board that “enforces” federal labor policy, allegedly to protect workers in the private sector.

Over the years, the NLRB has created its own internal policies and bureaucratic rules that restrict decertification well beyond what is required by federal law.

But one should never assume the wishes of employees mean anything to federal bureaucrats, especially if the employees want to get rid of union representation.

That brings us back to Mooresville and a labor law case study that comes with a “you can’t make this up” lesson to it.

For years, the workers at U.S. Brick were blocked from having a union decertification vote because the NLRB-created “contract bar” policy that says after union officials sign a bargaining contract with an employer, the NLRB won’t even consider allowing a decertification election for as long as three years.

This explains why union bosses push for contracts that expire in exactly three years. They create a “thread-the-needle” 30-day window for workers to attempt a union decertification before a new contract takes effect and immediately blocks any vote from being held for the next three years.

The Teamsters’ contract at the Mooresville facility expired late last year, but the workers’ opportunity to request a vote to remove the Teamsters quickly vanished.

Enter the Department of Justice. The Mooresville facility’s former owner was undergoing a merger and had to sell the facility to U.S. Brick to settle DOJ antitrust concerns. That government-forced sale triggered yet another NLRB-created election bar, the “successor bar,” which prevents the removal of an unwanted union for a year after ownership changes.

Now, events triggered by the Department of Justice, which U.S. Brick’s workers could not control or even foresee, could prevent them from voting for another three years if the Teamsters can get a new contract in place before the expiration of the one-year successor bar.

The NLRB explains all of this as necessary in the name of “industrial stability.” It’s clear, however, that the NLRB is not seeking any “stability” in how frequently workers get the opportunity to dismiss monopoly union representation through decertification. Nor are they trying to accommodate workers’ desire for “stability” in their relations with their employer, since decertifications only ever happen when enough workers demand it…

Read the rest of Mark’s piece on the Examiner’s website here.

In another piece that ran in The Washington Times on July 4, 2022, Mark went beyond individual NLRB policies that entrench union bosses, and demonstrated that monopoly union power by its very nature stifles the voices of all workers opposed to a union’s control:

When union officials take control of a workplace, they get a legal monopoly over all contract bargaining and can negotiate the terms of employment for every worker, even those who object. Monopoly bargaining is an extraordinary government-granted power that Big Labor protects at all costs.

Union officials insist that if they have the theoretical support of a majority of workers, all other workers must have union “representation” imposed on them. At its core, forced unionism is contrary to the constitutional principle of free association, and denies workers the right to choose their own representative. But there’s another problem: Union officials don’t even need majority support to get or stay in power.

If union officials win a unionization vote by a “majority” of those voting in a low-turnout election, the law allows them to obtain monopoly bargaining privileges. Once installed, a union doesn’t go away unless it leaves voluntarily, the company closes, or workers remove the union by organizing a decertification vote, which requires navigating a labyrinth of arcane labor laws.

As workers come and go, the forced representation remains. An analysis of over 40 years of union elections found that 94% of workers under union monopolies had never even voted for the union that “represents” them.

Union officials treat workers’ support as an annoying legal requirement, not as something that gives legitimacy to their monopoly power. It’s a mindset shared by many union partisans at the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB is supposed to neutrally resolve disputes between workers, employers and union officials. Instead, the NLRB uses its power to help union officials maintain their monopolies, and the current Biden majority has been more aggressive than ever.

Examples are everywhere. The NLRB created onerous restrictions on union decertification elections that make it harder for workers to remove an unwanted union. The NLRB’s Biden-appointed General Counsel has even moved to empower unions to gain monopoly bargaining authority without having to hold a secret-ballot election.

Then, there’s the board’s heavy use of mail-in ballots. In-person elections used to be the norm because they allowed NLRB observers to monitor voting and prevent interference. During the pandemic, the NLRB mainly used mail-only voting and has continued to do so even as workers have fully returned to work, mostly because union officials have demanded it.

A recent Bloomberg Law analysis demonstrated that unions are more likely to win elections when turnout is lower, so union officials benefit from making it harder to vote. By forcing workers to mail in their ballots from home — instead of giving them an opportunity to stop by a workplace voting booth — the NLRB further tilts the playing field in union officials’ favor by driving down turnout. And, because federal law lets union agents, but not employer representatives, visit workers in their homes, mail voting opens the door to one-sided union interference that’s impossible for election observers to monitor…

Read the rest of Mark’s piece on the Times’ website here.