Testimony: Biden Labor Board undermining rights of workers opposed to union affiliation, censoring speech critical of unions
Washington, DC (May 22, 2024) – This morning, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William L. Messenger is testifying before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions. The Subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), is holding a hearing titled “Exposing Union Tactics to Undermine Free and Fair Elections”.
As a National Right to Work Foundation staff attorney and now as Foundation Legal Director, Messenger has represented both public and private employees in numerous high-profile cases challenging coercive unionism. He was the lead counsel in multiple Supreme Court cases, including the landmark 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision, where he successfully argued that the First Amendment protects public employees against being compelled to financially support union activities.
Building on his over two decades of experience litigating on behalf of workers, including in cases before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Messenger will testify on some of the ways federal labor law has been twisted, especially by Biden appointees to the NLRB, to undermine the rights of employees opposed to union affiliation in order to promote union bosses’ coercive power.
In his testimony, Messenger documents how the NLRB, including through its radical 2023 Cemex decision, is promoting unreliable and abuse-prone “card check” organizing, undermining the protections workers enjoy by voting on unionization in the privacy of a secret ballot election, and infringing on the First Amendment by censoring speech critical of union officials:
“To suppress speech unfavorable to unions, the Biden NLRB operates the most repressive regime of government censorship in the nation. Even though Congress sought to foster free speech and debate about unionization with NLRA Section 8(c)—which provides that speech cannot be evidence of an unfair labor practice “if such expression contains no threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit”—the Biden NLRB flouts that limitation by declaring employer utterances unfavorable to unions, or even just questions about unions, to carry unspoken and implicit threats or promises of benefit…
“Cemex itself is designed to muffle speech critical of unionization. The Biden NLRB’s rationale for nullifying secret ballot elections if an employer engages in speech or conduct NLRB officials consider wrongful, and installing the union as the employees’ representative without an election, is to dissuade employers from engaging in such speech or conduct. This rationale is perverse—the agency plans to deprive employees of their right to vote if their employer says or does something NLRB officials disapprove of. This is like a kidnapper threatening to harm innocent hostages if his victim does not comply with his extortionate demands.”
Testifying alongside Messenger will be Stephen Delie of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michael Alcorn, a Trader Joe’s employee who saw firsthand the ways unions and their allies at the NLRB undermine the rights of workers who may be skeptical of unionization, and Lynn Rhinehart of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). EPI is a union-funded front group whose Board of Directors includes many of the most powerful union bosses in the country.
“This hearing shines a badly-needed spotlight on the many ways the Biden NLRB has abandoned its Congressional mandate to be a neutral enforcer of the law, and instead is acting as a taxpayer-funded organizing arm for Big Labor,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Through its oversight and legislative powers Congress has an important role to play in stopping the Labor Board from continuing to undermine the freedoms of the vast majority of American workers who want nothing to do with union affiliation.”
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.
