Washington, DC (September 1, 2010) – In a decision dated August 27 but only released yesterday, three members of the National Labor Relations Board granted review of a landmark 2007 case in which the federal labor board granted employees the right to demand a secret ballot election to remove an unwanted union within 45 days after the union obtained monopoly bargaining status through the coercive card check process.

In late 2009, union lawyers initiated a strategy to overturn the Dana Corp. decision won by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys. In a series of cases nationwide, union lawyers asked the NLRB to revoke the new protections to workers swept into union ranks through card check forced unionism, and now three members of the Board – all former union lawyers themselves – have agreed to consolidate two of those cases in a review of Dana.

As the dissenting Board members point out, workers across the country have already used Dana decertification elections to kick out unwanted unions, demonstrating the unreliability of card check instant organizing campaigns. Workers frequently sign union authorization cards due to union organizers’ intimidating tactics or even outright lies about what signing a card means. To remove the limited protection of the secret ballot in these cases – as the Obama NLRB appears set to do – would deny workers the ability to vote according to their conscience and remove an unwanted union from their workplace.

The Board’s decision to reconsider Dana highlights concerns over one member’s ethics and impartiality. President Obama’s radical recess appointee Craig Becker joined in the decision to revisit Dana despite his own participation as a lawyer for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in that very case.

In response to over a dozen motions for recusal brought by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, Becker agreed to recuse himself in a case that serves as a sequel to Dana because he coauthored a brief jointly filed by the AFL-CIO and United Auto Workers (UAW). However, he refused to recuse himself from two of the cases (AT&T Mobility and Aramark) in which union lawyers are seeking to overturn Dana because “[n]either of [his] former employers is a party or represents a party” in those cases.

But that’s only true if one accepts Becker’s shaky distinction between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its local affiliate unions (Aramark involves the Service Workers United union, an affiliate of the SEIU). Foundation attorneys have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether Becker’s participation in cases involving SEIU local unions violates his ethics pledge.

As Foundation attorneys point out, while Becker contends the national and local unions are “separate and distinct legal entit[ies],” the SEIU itself considers locals to be “constituent subordinate bodies.” Moreover, in 2009 over 85 percent of the SEIU’s receipts came from a per capita tax on the locals’ membership dues and fees. The national union even has the power to assume control over its locals if they do not conform to International policies.

The Obama NLRB’s decision to revisit Dana even appears designed to sidestep Becker’s ethics problem. Even though Aramark is also pending, the Board only consolidated two challenges to Dana, neither of which involves the SEIU or its affiliates. That means Becker could overturn the Dana precedent even though he participated as a union lawyer in the original Dana case and even though doing so would directly benefit his former employer in another pending case.

“While President Obama and members of Congress continue to push for a federal bill that would end the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, an obscure federal agency stacked with former union lawyers is poised to eliminate the private vote for workers who have been subjected to unreliable and coercive card check campaigns,” explained Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation.

“This is just the beginning of the Obama NLRB’s assault on freedom in the workplace, and individual employees are the ones who will pay the price,” continued Mix.

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.