National Right to Work Foundation comments call for NLRB election reforms to ensure workers are not trapped in unions opposed by most employees

Washington, DC (April 16, 2018) – Today the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed comments with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in response to the Labor Board’s Request for Information regarding the 2014 “Ambush Election” Rule pushed through by the Obama NLRB. The Foundation’s comments not only call for the 2014 changes to be rescinded, but ask the Board to institute new protections for workers who are forced under union monopoly representation they oppose.

The comments call on the newly constituted five member NLRB to require unions to regularly recertify that they have the support of at least a majority of workers or else lose their powerful status under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) as the monopoly “representative” of all workers in a workplace, including those who prefer a different union or no union at all. In its comments, the Foundation cites a recent study of NLRB data that found that 94 percent of workers currently under union monopoly representation have never even voted on that union in an NLRB secret ballot election.

“Just as no elected public official enjoys life tenure on the basis of winning one election, no union should maintain [their] extraordinary powers… on the basis of just one election…” the Foundation told the NLRB in its comments “Today, many workplaces unionized decades ago consist primarily, if not entirely, of workers hired long after any ‘choice’ was made to organize.”

The comments also call on the NLRB to remove numerous bureaucratically-enacted barriers not mandated by the NLRA that prevent workers from holding a decertification vote to remove an unwanted union from their workplace. The Foundation calls for the elimination of various “election bars,” for ending union officials’ ability to abuse the NLRB system by filing blocking charges to stop workers from holding decertification votes, and for other reforms that would streamline and simplify the decertification process.

National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys currently represent employees in over 80 cases at the NLRB, including many where workers have been blocked from even holding a vote to remove a union that they believe lacks the support of a majority of employees.

The Foundation opposed the one-sided 2014 rule changes which were designed to expand forced unionization by dramatically shortening the time frame individual workers have to gather, evaluate, and share information with their coworkers about the negative effects of unionization. Moreover, the rules require job providers to disclose workers’ personal information (including their phone numbers, email addresses, and shift information), thus opening up dissenting or undecided workers to intimidation and harassment.

“The Obama NLRB’s election rules made union organizing campaigns more one-sided and stifled the rights of employees opposed to unionization. It is long past time they be rescinded” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “However, simply reverting to the pre-Obama NLRB rules would still leave many workers – whose rights the NLRB is supposed to protect – trapped in unions they oppose and that a majority of their coworkers have never voted for.”

“That’s why, if union officials are going to be granted monopoly powers over every employee in a workplace, they should be required to regularly recertify that at least a majority actually want them there,” continued Mix. “Further the Labor Board should reform the one-sided NLRB election system that lets union organizers call for a unionization vote of nonunion employees at any time, but forces workers to wait months or even years to file to force a secret ballot vote on an incumbent union.”

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.