Workers’ first petition stalled by non-statutory NLRB ‘contract bar’ protecting unions’ control over workers
Hammond, LA (September 15, 2025) – Coty Hally, an employee of Wayne Sanderson Farms’ Hammond processing facility, has just filed a second petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking a union “decertification” election to remove United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 455 union officials from the workplace. Hally’s earlier petition in June of this year was dismissed by an NLRB Regional Director, which ruled that under its non-statutory “contract bar” policy no employee-requested decertification votes may occur for up to three years after a union contract is imposed. This occurred despite Hally having never seen the contract extension agreement that barred his petition.
Hally’s current petition, filed outside the contract bar’s arbitrary restriction, is supported by over 50% of his facility’s 550-person unit. The unit includes all production and maintenance employees, including truck drivers, at the poultry facility in Hammond, LA. Hally received free legal aid in filing both petitions from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
Concurrent with his two filed petitions, Hally also submitted a Request for Review to the NLRB, arguing that the agency should eliminate the three-year contract bar entirely, as it has no basis in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the NLRA and adjudicating disputes between employers, unions, and individual employees. Under the text of the NLRA, the NLRB can only reject a worker’s petition for an election if another election has already taken place in the past 12 months. Hally’s Request for Review points out that the contract bar is nowhere to be found in the text of the NLRA. It explains that the doctrine was instead made up by unelected NLRB bureaucrats, who overstepped their legal authority by adopting policies that are detrimental to the rights of workers the Board is tasked with defending.
The contract bar has prevented Hally and his coworkers from having an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election for months, protecting union officials from being held accountable by workers that do not recognize them as their “representatives.” The NLRB’s contract bar places undue burdens on workers’ right to free choice.
“A system that necessitates the filing of two separate petitions, signed by a majority of a workplace, seeking to remove one union is not only a broken system, but one that actively works against the best interests of employees,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Big Labor is not content with the special privileges granted to them by the law. Union bosses have also seen to it that they get a protected status from a federal agency that ought to be neutral and uncompromised.
“The NLRB needs to re-establish its impartiality in dealing with the disputes of American workers by doing away with the ‘contract bar’ and other non-statutory ‘bars’ that only serve to protect incumbent union bosses’ power over workplaces where they are opposed by most workers,” Mix added.
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.
