San Francisco, CA (July 21 2014) – In a precedent-setting federal case, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional director has denied a local restaurant worker’s motion to intervene to stop the federal agency from foisting unwanted union representation back on her workplace after she and her coworkers attempted to remove the union.

With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, Scoma’s of Sausalito restaurant worker Georgina Canche will appeal the NLRB regional director’s order to an NLRB Administrative Law Judge (ALJ).

Canche and a majority of her coworkers petitioned their employer to remove the UNITE HERE Local 2850 union from their workplace. After the workers presented the petition, restaurant management withdrew recognition of the union as the workers’ monopoly bargaining representative as long-standing law allows.

Local 2850 union officials then filed federal charges with the NLRB in an attempt to nullify the workers’ petition and insert the union hierarchy back into the workplace. The NLRB’s General Counsel filed a complaint designed to force the restaurant to once again recognize the union as the workers’ representative.

This aggressive policy of challenging employees’ withdrawal petitions is being pushed by union lawyer Richard Griffin, who was installed as NLRB General Counsel in October 2013 by President Obama and Senator Harry Reid. Prior to being the Board’s top lawyer in charge of enforcing federal labor laws, Griffin was an illegal recess appointee to the NLRB, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month in Noel Canning v. NLRB.

«Without allowing workers a say in the process, the Obama NLRB is seeking to overturn long-standing precedent to make it more difficult for workers to remove an unwanted union hierarchy from their workplace,» explained Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. «Highlighting the Obama Board’s pro-forced unionism bias, the NLRB maintains that a company can recognize a union if a majority of workers sign union ‘cards’ through the notoriously unreliable card check method, while its top lawyer works to eliminate workers’ ability to use a majority petition to oust an unwanted 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 more than 250 cases nationwide per year.