Washington, DC (August 6, 2012) – In response to the National Mediation Board’s proposed rule changes regarding union elections in the air and railway industries, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an organization that provides free assistance to thousands of workers nationwide, submitted comments faulting the Board for ignoring the law’s persistent bias toward forced unionization.

The Foundation’s comments focus on the hurdles facing employees in the air and railway industries who wish to remove unwanted union “representation.” Under current law, the Railway Labor Act lacks an explicit procedure for ejecting a union. The Foundation’s comments encourage the National Mediation Board to regularize union decertification procedures to allow rail and airline workers to more easily remove an unwanted union presence.

The Foundation’s comments also urge the Board to allow all workers – including new hires – to vote in unionization elections even if they were not part of the company when a petition for a unionization election was first submitted. Finally, the comments argue that the 50 percent showing of interest threshold that triggers unionization elections should be applied when new bargaining units are created as a result of a merger instead of a lower threshold supported by unions.

“Currently, employees in the rail and airline industries have no clear blueprint for removing an unwanted union from their workplaces,” said Patrick Semmens, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The National Mediation Board’s proposed rule changes make no effort to correct this glaring omission, which gives union bosses carte blanche to run roughshod over workers’ rights once they acquire monopoly bargaining privileges.”

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.