Legal Victory: West Virginia Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Right to Work
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, July/August 2020 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation attorneys filed 10 legal briefs defending Right to Work from union boss legal attack
The Foundation added West Virginia to the list of states where it has successfully helped defend Right to Work since 2012. Now the state’s motto, “Montani Semper Liberi” (“Mountaineers are Always Free”) applies to the state’s workers.
CHARLESTON, WV – The West Virginia Supreme Court closed the book on a case brought by union lawyers seeking to overturn the state’s popular Right to Work Law, which protects Mountain State workers from being forced to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment. Foundation staff attorneys filed 10 briefs in defense of Right to Work, including briefs submitted for pro-Right to Work employees who wanted the freedom to cut off financial support for unions in their workplace.
Ultimately, the West Virginia Supreme Court rejected outrageous arguments from union lawyers that union hierarchies have a legal “right” to a portion of a worker’s paycheck because that worker is also forced to accept their so-called “representation.” In their ruling, the justices repeatedly cited the landmark 2018 Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that requiring public sector employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment is a First Amendment violation.
In the decision, Justice Evan Jenkins wrote for the majority that West Virginia’s Right to Work Law “does not violate constitutional rights of association, property, or liberty” and that states are “expressly authorized under federal law” to prohibit union bosses from requiring dues or fees as a condition of employment. Justice Jenkins also maintained that Janus provides strong support for the law.
The West Virginia Legislature passed Right to Work over then-Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto in February 2016, making West Virginia the 26th Right to Work state. The Foundation immediately offered free legal assistance to employees who had questions about exercising their rights.
Foundation Attorneys Spring into Action as Soon as Protections Enacted
The Foundation also created a special task force to defend the West Virginia law, which began applying to collective bargaining agreements that were entered into, modified, renewed or extended after July 1, 2016.
On June 27, 2016, lawyers for several state unions brought a case (later renamed West Virginia AFL-CIO, et al. v. Governor James C. Justice, et al.) in an attempt to overturn the popular law. Polling consistently shows that Americans overwhelmingly back Right to Work laws. A poll of union households even found that 80 percent of union members supported the Right to Work principle that union membership and dues payment should be voluntary and not required as a condition of employment.
Despite decades of precedent upholding such laws, Judge Jennifer Bailey of the Kanawha County Circuit Court issued a February 2017 order at the behest of union lawyers, granting a preliminary injunction that purported to block the law. The union lawyers’ primary arguments in this case for why the Right to Work protections for workers should be overturned had already been rejected by a Federal Court of Appeals and the Indiana Supreme Court. They also ran counter to nearly 70 years of legal precedent, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions, upholding the constitutionality of state Right to Work laws.
Foundation staff attorneys filed legal briefs for Reginald Gibbs, who worked as a lead slot machine technician with the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and Donna Harper, who worked as a laundry aide and nursing assistant at the Genesis HealthCare Tygart Center in Fairmont, West Virginia. Harper’s brief explained that because she had exercised her right under the Right to Work protections to refrain from subsidizing the Teamsters union at her workplace, killing those protections would result in her being fired.
Union Boss Attacks on Right to Work in Other States Successfully Turned Back
“The West Virginia Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to safeguard the right to freely choose whether or not one will financially support a union marks a great victory for Mountain State employees,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Workers who disapprove of union boss activities can rest assured that they cannot be terminated for refusing to tender dues to a union, and those who want to support union activities may do so uninhibited.”
In addition to West Virginia, Foundation staff attorneys have successfully pursued legal action in recent years to defend and enforce new Right to Work laws in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kentucky, all of which have passed Right to Work protections for employees since 2012.
Delaware Poultry Worker Charges UFCW Brass with Illegal Dues Deductions, Threats
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, July/August 2020 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation attorneys assist worker leading effort to oust unpopular union
Employees at the Selbyville, DE, Mountaire Farms plant were subjected to an illegal forced-dues clause by UFCW union bosses, who for months have also tried to block their right to vote on whether union officials deserve to stay.
SELBYVILLE, DE – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, Mountaire Farms employee Oscar Cruz Sosa hit United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 27 union bosses with federal unfair labor practice charges. The charges assert that union officials violated his and his coworkers’ rights by enforcing an illegal forced-dues provision in the monopoly bargaining contract, and that union bosses threatened him for spearheading a petition for a vote to remove the union.
Cruz Sosa’s charges come after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 5 Director in Baltimore rejected union arguments that the decertification election Cruz Sosa and his coworkers requested should be blocked. Under a controversial NLRB-created policy known as the “contract bar,” employees’ statutory right to hold a decertification vote to remove a union can be blocked for up to three years when a union contract is in place.
However, under longstanding precedent the “contract bar” to decertification does not apply when the monopoly bargaining contract in place contains an unlawful forced-dues clause.
Worker Deflects Union Legal Attack by Exposing Illegal Forced-Dues Clause
Prior to this charge, the NLRB Region 5 Director found that the contract between Mountaire Farms and UFCW union officials illegally required workers to immediately pay union dues upon being hired, instead of providing new hires a 30-day grace period the federal labor statute and longstanding precedent require. Because Delaware lacks Right to Work protections for its employees, Cruz Sosa and his coworkers can be required to pay union fees to keep their jobs.
The NLRB Region 5 Director thus ruled that the vote Cruz Sosa and his coworkers requested should proceed, and scheduled the vote to decertify the union. Cruz Sosa’s unfair labor practice charge, citing that decision’s finding that the forced-dues clause is unlawful, asks the NLRB to order union officials to refund all dues and fees seized from him and his coworkers under the auspices of that illegal clause.
Even after they were unable to block the election with the “contract bar,” UFCW union officials did not give up. In fact, union lawyers have initiated at least three other “blocking charges” against the employer in a last-ditch effort to block the vote, another common tactic used by union bosses to halt or delay workers’ attempts to vote them out.
UFCW union officials’ attempts to stifle the decertification effort didn’t end there. They also asked that any vote be delayed and changed to a“mail-in” vote, even though it had already been scheduled to take place in person on the premises where the workers work every day. In the responses to the union attempts to scuttle the planned vote, Cruz Sosa’s Foundation-provided attorneys argued that the vote should go forward as scheduled, because on-site elections are the NLRB’s preferred method for conducting elections, and the on-site vote was announced to workers weeks ago.
Cruz Sosa also alleged that a UFCW agent came to his house uninvited back in March. The agent warned him “that the decertification process being undertaken was ‘illegal’” and that a court battle was coming, according to his charge filed at NLRB Region 5.
Union Agents Threaten Worker after He Attempts to Exercise Rights
Cruz Sosa’s charge states that this was “threatening” and “coercive behavior” and a clear attempt to restrain him and his coworkers in the exercise of their right under the National Labor Relations Act to vote out an unwanted union.
“The threats and dues deductions in this case show how union bosses regularly trample workers’ rights in order to keep forced dues rolling into their coffers,” observed National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “We hope that NLRB Region 5 will immediately prosecute the union for these violations, and ultimately order the union to refund all dues and fees collected from Mountaire Farms workers under the unlawful forced-dues clause.”
Semmens continued: “While UFCW officials were caught red-handed in this case, these types of forced union dues abuses will continue until Delaware workers have the protection of a Right to Work law, which ensures that all union membership and financial support are strictly voluntary.”
Las Vegas Police Officer Hits Union with Lawsuit for Seizing Union Dues in Violation of First Amendment Rights
Union officials enforced illegal “escape period” scheme to limit First Amendment right to cut off dues
Las Vegas, NV (August 13, 2020) – An officer of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) is suing both the Las Vegas Police Protective Association (PPA) union and the police department for illegally seizing union dues from her paycheck. The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the District of Nevada, states that officials of the PPA union and LVMPD illegally curtailed the officer’s First Amendment rights under the landmark 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision by making the unlawful deductions. The officer is represented by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
In Janus, which was argued and won by Foundation staff attorneys, the High Court ruled that forcing public sector workers to subsidize a union hierarchy as a condition of employment violates the First Amendment. The justices also declared that union dues can only be deducted from a public sector employee’s pay with an affirmative and knowing waiver of his or her First Amendment right not to pay union dues.
According to officer Melodie DePierro’s complaint, she began working for LVMPD in 2006 and voluntarily joined the PPA union at that time. In January 2020 she first tried to exercise her Janus rights, sending letters to both union officials and LVMPD that she was resigning her membership. The letters demanded a stop to all union dues being taken from her paycheck. Her complaint reports that union and police department agents rejected that request, and did so again after she renewed her demands in February 2020. As of the filing of her lawsuit, full union dues are still being seized from her paycheck.
Union officials asserted that the monopoly bargaining contract between PPA and LVMPD only permitted employees to cut off union dues deductions within an “impermissibly narrow escape period between October 1 and October 20 each year,” DePierro’s complaint says. Her lawsuit points out that she “never signed any dues deduction authorization form agreeing to the restrictive escape period of 20 days contained” in the monopoly bargaining contract.
The complaint argues that the 20-day “escape period” imposed by union officials and the police department “caused and continues to cause deduction of and collection of dues from DePierro, who does not consent to paying union dues” and explains that this is “impermissible under Janus.” DePierro is demanding that the US District Court declare the “escape period” scheme unconstitutional, forbid PPA and LVMPD from further enforcing it, and order PPA and LVMPD to refund all dues that were unlawfully withheld from her pay since she tried to stop the deductions, plus interest.
With free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys, public servants across the country have successfully challenged and overturned similar “escape period” policies. Just last month, a Foundation-backed lawsuit for four State of Ohio employees resulted in the elimination of such a scheme for almost 30,000 state workers. In nearby California, Ventura County Community College District math professor Michael McCain filed a class-action lawsuit which last year freed both him and his colleagues from another union-created “escape period.”
“Officer DePierro is working hard to keep Las Vegas safe during its reopening. Instead of respecting her First Amendment Janus rights, PPA union bosses have decided to keep imposing an unconstitutional policy on her just to keep her hard-earned money rolling into their coffers,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The High Court made perfectly clear in Janus that affirmative consent from employees is required for any dues deductions to occur. Yet PPA union bosses are clearly violating that standard here.”
Michigan Rieth-Riley Workers Submit Second Petition for Vote to Remove IUOE Union Bosses from Power
NLRB Region 7 in Detroit blocked vote for months at union bosses’ behest, but recent “blocking charge” reforms require the vote to move forward
Detroit, MI (August 11, 2020) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Michigan-based employees of the Rieth-Riley Construction Company are again petitioning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 7 in Detroit for a vote to remove International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 324 bosses from their workplace. The petition comes after Region 7 officials held the employees’ first petition in abeyance based on unproven allegations IUOE bosses made against Rieth-Riley.
Employee Rayalan Kent submitted the new petition with signatures from well over the number of his coworkers required by law to trigger such a vote. Kent and his coworkers hope that new protections from the NLRB in Washington, DC, which became effective at the end of July, will better safeguard from union legal maneuvering their right to vote out the union. Kent’s Foundation-provided attorneys also invoked the reforms in a Request for Review submitted this April in defense of his first decertification petition, which the Board declined to grant.
After Kent submitted his original petition in March 2020, he was told by NLRB Region 7 officials via email that the election would be delayed “pending the investigation” of “blocking charges” filed by IUOE officials against the employer. However, the Region provided Kent no information regarding the charges or why they rose to the requisite level to block the employees’ petition. “Blocking charges” are filed by union bosses against employers to stop decertification votes requested by employees, and generally contain unrelated claims of employer wrongdoing.
However, one of the reforms the NLRB enacted through the rulemaking process (which became effective at the end of July) largely eliminates “blocking charges” as a means for delaying a vote. The NLRB’s new rules acknowledge the inherent unfairness of the previous system, and generally permit employees to immediately vote on whether a union should stay before the Board deals with any charges filed around the election. In the past, union officials could stay in power by blocking workers’ votes for months or even years while often unrelated allegations against employers were litigated.
When it issued the final rule in April, the NLRB dozens of times cited comments the Foundation submitted to it earlier this year. Those comments pointed out that the NLRB’s old “blocking charge” rules served only to keep union bosses in power while forbidding employees from exercising their right to vote to eliminate unwanted unions. They also pointed out the old rules are not required by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law that the NLRB is charged with enforcing.
“Mr. Kent and his coworkers have now been fighting to free themselves from IUOE union boss stonewalling for far too long as the workers seek to exercise their right to vote out an unwanted union hierarchy,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “NLRB Region 7 officials should apply the new NLRB rules, and immediately schedule and hold a decertification vote for Mr. Kent and his fellow Rieth-Riley employees.”
Kent and his coworkers are not the only Michigan workers dealing with election delays from NLRB Region 7. Lansing, MI transportation worker Sandy Harris is asking the NLRB in Washington, DC, in an appeal to apply the new rules regarding “blocking charges” to allow a vote to remove Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) bosses to occur at her workplace. As with Kent’s case, the vote was postponed without even a hearing as to whether the union’s charges have merit or if they have a causal connection to the employees’ petition for an election.
Full Foundation Action May/June 2020 Newsletter Now Online
All articles from the May/June issue of Foundation Action are now on the website.
In this issue:
- Foundation Asks Supreme Court to Hear Janus Case Again, Seeking Return of Forced Fees
- Rhode Island Officers Win Over $110,000 in Lawsuits Ending Forced-Dues Scheme
- Military Base Employee Charges Union Bosses with Religious Discrimination
- University of California Workers Challenge Restrictions on Janus Rights
- Foundation Defends NMB Rule Simplifying Votes to Remove Railway and Airline Unions
Recent articles can be found here. To sign up for a free copy of the newsletter via mail please see the form at the bottom of this page.
National Right to Work Foundation Issues Special Legal Notice for State of Ohio Employees Freed from Illegal OCSEA Union Dues Scheme
Notice explains that workers under OCSEA union power can freely cut off union dues deductions, warns employees against signing away their rights
Columbus, OH (August 6, 2020) – National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys today issued a special legal notice to State of Ohio employees regarding their First Amendment rights under the Janus v. AFSCME US Supreme Court case. The notice comes after an estimated 28,000 State of Ohio workers were freed of restrictions in exercising those rights as a result of a lawsuit against the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA, AFSCME Council 11) union brought by a group of State of Ohio employees with free legal representation from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
The class-action lawsuit Allen v. AFSCME challenged OCSEA’s “maintenance of membership” policy that blocked workers from exercising their right to end union dues deductions except for a brief “escape period” once every three years at the expiration of the union monopoly bargaining contract.
Right to Work attorneys argued that the restriction was unconstitutional under the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision, which was argued and won by Foundation staff attorneys. In Janus, the Court struck down mandatory union fees for public sector workers as an infringement of their First Amendment rights. It also ruled that the government can only deduct union dues or fees with an individual’s affirmative consent, including a knowing waiver of their First Amendment right not to fund union activities.
As a result of this lawsuit’s settlement, union officials have given up their attempts to enforce the coercive policy based on union-designed “dues deduction” cards, which Foundation staff attorneys argued failed to meet the standard laid out in Janus. This means approximately 28,000 workers are now free to stop dues at any time.
The full notice is available at https://www.nrtw.org/ohio-janus/.
The notice explains the simple process by which state employees can exercise their right to end dues deductions, complete with sample resignation letters. It also warns employees that OCSEA union bosses may solicit them to sign new dues deduction forms which are not covered by the terms of the settlement. In light of that, the notice reminds workers that under Janus no State of Ohio worker can be forced to sign a union dues deduction form as a condition of employment, no matter what union agents may tell them.
“OCSEA intends to solicit employees to sign new membership and dues deduction cards that purport to restrict when employees can stop the deduction of union dues from their wages,” the notice reads.
“All State of Ohio public workers must be aware that they cannot be forced into abandoning their First Amendment right to refrain from subsidizing an unwanted union hierarchy just to keep their jobs,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Any State of Ohio public servant who is falsely told that they must sign a union dues deduction form should contact the Foundation for free legal assistance in defending their Janus rights.”
The recent settlement is not the only time Ohio public employees have with National Right to Work Foundation legal aid successfully challenged union boss attempts to limit their rights.
Seven other Ohio public employees won the first-in-the-nation victory against unconstitutional “escape periods” with Foundation aid in January 2019, after they filed a class-action federal lawsuit challenging a similar policy created by AFSCME Council 8 bosses. They won a settlement ending the restrictions for themselves and their coworkers. That win was followed by two other Ohio public workers, Connie Pennington and Donna Fizer, successfully ending “escape period” restrictions with Foundation assistance in 2019.
Labor Board Prosecuting WV Teamsters Union for Discriminatory Pay Scheme, Now Seeks Compensation for Affected Employees
Tygart Center employee’s NLRB charges challenged scheme which gave union stewards more pay than other employees in clear violation of federal law
Fairmont, WV (August 5, 2020) – In a case brought for Donna Harper by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 6 has issued an amended complaint against Teamsters Local 175 for imposing a discriminatory pay scheme on Harper and her coworkers at Tygart Center at Fairmont Campus. Tygart Center agreed to this discriminatory pay arrangement in the union bargaining agreement.
In 2019 Harper obtained free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys in filing charges against the union for imposing the unlawful provision, under which Teamsters union stewards were paid more per hour than other employees. NLRB Region 6 issued a complaint on this issue in June, and now has amended its complaint to ask for a more complete remedy. The complaint now “seeks an Order requiring payment to the unit employees of the amount equal to the additional monetary benefit paid to” shop stewards under the policy.
NLRB Region 6’s amended complaint now incorporates a remedy requested by Foundation staff attorneys in a separate case against the Tygart Center for the role it played in the scheme. In the NLRB-imposed settlement in that case, Tygart Center officials agreed to only stop paying Teamsters union stewards more per hour than other employees going forward. Foundation attorneys had argued that employees should have gotten compensation for the difference in pay in the past created by the illegal scheme because it “denied a benefit to every employee who was not a Union steward.”
The case against the Teamsters will now be tried before an NLRB Administrative Law Judge.
Foundation staff attorneys also filed an amicus brief for Harper in the years-long legal battle waged by AFL-CIO union lawyers to overturn West Virginia’s Right to Work law. Under a Right to Work law, no private or public sector employee can be forced to fund union activities as a condition of getting or keeping a job. This protection was unanimously upheld by the West Virginia Supreme Court in April 2020.
“Ms. Harper stood up against a blatantly discriminatory policy enforced by her employer at the behest of Teamsters union bosses, and this amended complaint puts her one step closer to ensuring her and other Tygart Center employees’ rights are vindicated,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “That Teamsters bosses were willing to impose a scheme so clearly illegal demonstrates how out of touch they are with the rank-and-file workers they claim to represent, and how accustomed they had become to an environment where workers had to financially support them or be fired.”
Mix added: “Fortunately, because Mountain State workers now have the protection of Right to Work, West Virginia union bosses have to secure the voluntary support of workers instead of being allowed to threaten workers to pay up or be fired.”
Foundation Defends NMB Rule Simplifying Votes to Remove Railway and Airline Unions
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, May/June 2020 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Brief opposes union lawsuit challenging a simplified decertification procedure
Trump NMB member Kyle Fortson was Chairman while the Board initiated changes to the process by which air and rail employees could vote out a union, following Foundation advice.
WASHINGTON, DC – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys filed a legal brief in United States District Court last month for a flight attendant, opposing an effort led by the AFL-CIO to overturn a recent rule by the National Mediation Board (NMB) that simplifies the process for workers hoping to vote out a union they oppose.
Foundation staff attorneys filed the amicus brief for Allegiant Airlines flight attendant Steven Stoecker to defend the NMB’s rule that removed arbitrary barriers to decertification elections under the Railway Labor Act (RLA). They also filed the brief for the Foundation itself, which has provided free legal representation to numerous workers in the railroad and airline industries under the jurisdiction of the RLA, which the NMB is charged with enforcing.
With Foundation Aid, Flight Attendant Defends Rights from Union Assault
The Foundation’s Strategic Litigation Program’s 1983 victory in Russell v. NMB allowed workers to terminate union monopoly representation under the RLA. However, removing an unwanted union under the old NMB rules required an unnecessarily complex process in which workers had to create and solicit support for a fake “straw man” just to vote out the incumbent union.
Under the NMB’s new rules, finalized in July 2019, a majority of workers in a bargaining unit can simply petition for a direct secret-ballot vote to decertify a union they oppose.
Stoecker had attempted to remove the Transport Workers Union (TWU) from its monopoly bargaining status in his workplace from 2014 to 2016, but those attempts ultimately were
unsuccessful under the old “straw man” election rules. As a result, the TWU remains the monopoly bargaining representative over his workplace. “The National Mediation Board’s Final Rule simplifies the union selection or rejection process under the Railway Labor Act and erases nonstatutory barriers that hinder employees’ efforts to freely choose or reject a representative,” reads the amicus brief filed by Foundation staff attorneys. “The brief responds to a lawsuit filed by labor unions, which benefited from the complexities of the ‘straw man’ process, to challenge the new rule and the Board’s statutory authority to establish it.”
Foundation Advocacy Ended Needlessly Complex “Straw Man” Process
Before the NMB adopted the Final Rule last year, workers like Stoecker had to sign authorization cards designating an employee to be the “straw man” representative even though that employee had no intention of representing the unit. In the election that followed, the ballot options included the name of the union that workers wished to decertify, the name of the “straw man,” the option for a write-in candidate, and, confusingly, the option for “no union.”
Under the old guidelines, workers who voted for either the “straw man” or “no union,” in hopes to oust union officials, would unknowingly be splitting the vote opposed to unionization, as votes counted for these options were not tallied together but separately. The NMB’s final rule allows workers to vote out union representatives directly, without the cumbersome and confusing prior scheme.
“That union bosses are suing the National Mediation Board for adopting this commonsense reform shows they are far more concerned with maintaining their power than respecting the right of rank-and-file workers to decide whether or not they actually want to remain in union ranks,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The Foundation has long advocated this type of change in the union decertification process. We are pleased the NMB has — as we called upon it to do in comments filed last year — finally made this commonsense reform.
“Ultimately the Railway Labor Act has many fundamental problems that require legislative action, not the least of which is that it grants union bosses the power to have workers fired for nonpayment of union dues or fees even in states with Right to Work laws,” observed Mix. “That makes it all the more important that while we wait for more sweeping reforms, workers are not trapped in forced-dues ranks simply because of the unnecessarily complex ‘straw man’ decertification process.”
Shamrock Foods Driver Asks Labor Board to End “Successor Bar” Policy Blocking Workers’ Right to Remove Unwanted Union
Appeal: Workers should not be trapped in union ranks and denied decertification votes when employer changes
Boise, ID (July 30, 2020) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, Idaho-based Shamrock Foods delivery driver Curtis Thomason is appealing a decision by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 27 which dismissed a petition signed by him and a majority of his coworkers for a vote to remove Teamsters Local 483 union bosses from power at his workplace. Thomason’s appeal asks the full NLRB in Washington, D.C., to overturn the so-called “successor bar” doctrine, which blocks employees’ right to hold a vote to decertify a union for up to a year if a successor employer has recently taken over operations in a workplace.
According to the decision by Region 27, Shamrock Foods acquired operations in October 2019 at the two warehouses where Teamsters Local 483 union bosses held bargaining power. Shamrock began bargaining talks with Teamsters officials in December 2019. Thomason submitted a petition for a decertification vote signed by well over the threshold of employees necessary to initiate such an election on May 26, 2020. At that point, Shamrock Foods and Teamsters officials still hadn’t finalized a monopoly bargaining contract, and hadn’t even discussed economic terms of a contract.
Region 27’s decision ruled that Thomason and his coworkers’ petition, because it was submitted “within six months of the first bargaining date” between Shamrock Foods and Teamsters officials, should be blocked by the “successor bar.” This policy does not appear in the text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law that the NLRB is charged with enforcing, but is instead the product of decisions by prior NLRB majorities favoring union bosses.
Thomason’s Foundation-backed appeal argues that the “successor bar” arbitrarily curbs employee free choice just to protect union officials from being ousted, saying “the successor bar is designed to protect incumbent unions and exalt their interests over Mr. Thomason’s and his co-workers’ free choice rights.” It also points out that “the successor bar’s paternalistic notion that employees suffer ‘anxiety’ in all corporate reorganizations, and are therefore incapable of deciding for themselves whether the incumbent union is worth keeping, is fatuous.”
In April, following several rounds of comments from the Foundation, the NLRB issued final rules substantially eliminating three other non-statutory policies that union bosses often manipulate to bar workers from exercising their right to vote out unpopular unions. Among the policies nixed was one that allowed union bosses to file “blocking charges” containing unrelated allegations of employer misconduct to block secret-ballot employee votes on whether to oust a union. NLRB regional offices often block employee votes following a “blocking charge” without even a hearing into whether the supposed employer conduct and employees’ disaffection with the union are linked.
“It is ridiculous that the NLRB has let union bosses block employees’ right to a secret-ballot vote on whether or not a union deserves to stay in power at their workplace based merely on a change in employers,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “If anything, changes in ownership of a company should be automatic grounds for a decertification vote, because to the extent there was ever support for the union it was to deal with the previous employer, not the new ownership.”
“We urge the NLRB in Washington to immediately overturn this anti-worker ‘bar’ policy and ultimately do away with all non-statutory policies which stifle the right of rank-and-file workers to freely decide who their voice will be in the workplace,” Mix added.
National Right to Work President Encouraged by NLRB Proposed Rule Protecting Workers’ Privacy in Run Up to Unionization Votes
Rule imposed by Obama NLRB forced employers to hand over employee private email and phone numbers to union organizers
Washington, DC (July 28, 2020) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced today proposed rulemaking regarding its election procedures. This proposal would eliminate a requirement imposed by the Obama NLRB in 2014 that employers must hand over workers’ private information to union organizers, including phone numbers and email addresses, even over the objection of individual workers.
National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix commented that the NLRB’s proposal is a needed safeguard for the privacy of employees, protecting them from union boss coercion:
“Today the NLRB takes a necessary step towards ending a gross invasion of workers’ privacy inherent in the Obama Board’s deeply flawed 2014 Ambush Election Rule. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which has provided free legal aid to numerous workers victimized by union boss retaliation utilizing workers’ private information, cited the privacy issues with handing over employees’ personal private contact information both in opposition to the 2014 rule and again in 2018 comments to the new NLRB.
“The Board should resist any calls to delay or extend its rulemaking deadlines announced today so it can implement these common sense worker privacy protections as swiftly as possible.”
The ambush election rules were rushed out on December 15, 2014, the last day of former union lawyer Nancy Schiffer’s term on the NLRB. The NLRB had previously rushed the regulations out before former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer Craig Becker’s term expired in December 2011, but they were later invalidated by a federal district court in 2012 on procedural grounds.
In addition to submitting comments to the Obama NLRB opposing the rule when it was first announced in 2014, Foundation staff attorneys helped three construction workers whose privacy had been violated under the policy to join a lawsuit in April 2015 challenging it. Veteran Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman also testified before the US House of Representatives on the dangers of the policy in 2015.
