Mississippi and Louisiana AT&T Mobility employees seek to join others in California, Tennessee and Texas who have successfully ousted the CWA

Mississippi & Louisiana (September 5, 2024) – In-Home Experts from AT&T Mobility locations across Mississippi and Louisiana have joined together to file petitions seeking elections to remove Communications Workers of America (CWA) union officials from power in their workplaces. The two groups of AT&T employees seek to join with hundreds of other AT&T workers in California, Tennessee and Texas who have already won their efforts to remove the CWA. All five groups of employees received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Michael Swift, an In-Home Expert for AT&T Mobility, filed the “decertification petition” with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on behalf of his coworkers across four AT&T Mobility locations in Mississippi. Marquita Jones, a Louisiana-based In-Home Expert, did the same for her colleagues across four Louisiana locations.

If the AT&T Mobility In-Home Experts win their decertification efforts, they will join well over 800 AT&T employees from across California, Texas, and Tennessee, who have also successfully challenged CWA card checks. Under card check, union organizers bypass the secret ballot election process and instead collect cards face-to-face from employees that are then counted as “votes” for the union. Without the privacy of a secret ballot vote, many workers report being pressured, bullied or threatened into signing, which is among the reasons why card check has long been recognized as inherently unreliable and abuse-prone.

In Tennessee and elsewhere, CWA union officials argued the units of AT&T In-Home Experts who had been unionized through card check were already “merged” into a larger unit comprised of thousands of employees, which would effectively trap workers in the union in perpetuity because petitioning for a decertification vote in such a large, spread out unit would be virtually impossible.

Fortunately, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys successfully countered CWA lawyers’ “merged unit” gambit, resulting in the votes being scheduled. Faced with an inevitable vote among the workers, in Tennessee, California and Texas, CWA officials conceded defeat instead of facing a decertification vote.

Biden-Harris NLRB Will Soon Block Workers from Challenging Dubious Union “Card Check” Drives

CWA union officials used the card check process to claim monopoly bargaining power over AT&T In-Home Experts in California, Tennessee, and Texas. However, Foundation-backed 2020 reforms to the NLRB’s election rules permitted all three sets of workers to successfully challenge the CWA union’s ascent to power.

Collectively referred to as the “Election Protection Rule,” the reforms permit employees to submit decertification petitions within a 45-day window after the finalization of a card check. The Election Protection Rule also prevents union officials from manipulating charges they file alleging employer misconduct to block workers from casting ballots in a decertification election, among other things.

Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris NLRB in Washington, DC, issued a final rule in late July that will undo the Election Protection Rule and make it much harder for rank-and-file workers to exercise their right to vote out union officials they oppose. While the rule change will not take effect in time to stop the AT&T Mobility employees from having the decertification votes they requested, it will likely quash or substantially delay similar efforts after the repeal takes effect at the end of September.

The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, which includes administering votes to certify and decertify unions. Both employees filed the decertification petitions in August with signatures from more than the 30% of employees required, and both seek to challenge so-called “card check” unionizations that CWA union bosses foisted on their coworkers.

“If Mrs. Jones and Mr. Swift had filed their decertification petitions just a few months later, they would be trapped in a union they oppose, denied even the chance at decertification vote for years and likely forever,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This is yet another example of the Biden-Harris NLRB steamrolling the rights of independent-minded employees, so union bosses can expand their forced dues ranks.

“American workers don’t deserve to be stripped of this freedom, and with the changes set to take place in weeks, employees seeking a vote to remove an unwanted union should act quickly,” added Mix. “Those who are inevitably prevented from voting out unwanted union bosses due to this cynical rule change are also encouraged to contact the Foundation to explore their legal options.”

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.