The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, January/February 2024 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.

RWDSU union officials abandon 500+ employee unit ahead of vote at tire wholesaler

Tire-d of the RWDSU: Chris Dorney submitted a huge number of signatures from his coworkers at tire wholesaler Max Finkelstein when petitioning the NLRB for a vote to remove the RWDSU union.

WINCHESTER, VA – The Biden National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which includes among its members two former union bosses from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is pursuing an agenda that hasn’t exactly been making it easy for workers to vote out a union they don’t want. But that hasn’t stopped workers across the country from going to extraordinary lengths to kick out unions that don’t serve their interests.

In October 2023, Chris Dorney, a Winchester, VA-based employee of tire wholesaler Max Finkelstein, kick-started a cross-country effort to vote the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) out of 15 warehouse facilities across the eastern United States. This work unit included more than 500 employees across Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut.

Virginia Worker Mustered Strong Showing on Petition for Union Ouster Vote at Tire Wholesaler

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Dorney submitted a petition to the NLRB containing more than enough employee signatures to trigger a vote to remove the union from the large unit.

While Dorney and his fellow Virginia employees enjoyed the Right to Work freedom to opt-out of dues payments to the union, the same couldn’t be said for any of the other employees, all of whom hail from states where dues payments can be mandated as a condition of employment. But voting RWDSU bosses out of power entirely at the tire wholesaler would end the union’s forced-dues power.

“We warehouse workers and drivers at Max Finkelstein may be from many different facilities in many different states, but we are in agreement about one thing: RWDSU union officials don’t represent our interests,” Dorney said of the effort. “It’s our right under federal law to challenge RWDSU’s forced representation power.”

RWDSU Bosses Flee Unit as Union Officials Rack Up Losses Nationwide

However, before the vote could occur, RWDSU union officials disclaimed interest in continuing their monopoly representation powers over the unit, likely to avoid an embarrassing rejection by workers at the ballot box.

Unionized workers are increasingly requesting elections to remove unwanted unions — a potential reason for the Biden NLRB’s efforts to crack down on decertification votes. Additionally, union bosses are increasingly losing these contests. As of last year, filings for union decertification votes had shot up by over 40 percent since 2020. Of decertification elections that occurred, the number which resulted in union bosses losing went up by 72 percent.

“Mr. Dorney and his coworkers’ effort to kick out the RWDSU union, which spanned several states, 15 facilities, and hundreds of workers, is yet another example that workers often want to escape union officials’ one-size-fits-all agenda. It’s also a demonstration that workers will go to great lengths in order to exercise this right,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “But the Biden NLRB, bent on empowering the President’s union boss political allies, plans to grant unions even more power to defeat workers’ will.”