Employees file motion to intervene to challenge Labor Board ‘accretion’ doctrine used to impose SEIU monopoly bargaining on them against their will

Lehigh Valley, PA (November 13, 2017) – With legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, employees at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Schuylkill East filed a motion with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC to intervene in a case to assert that their rights were violated when Service Employees International Union (SEIU) “representation” was imposed on them against their will.

The 160 workers at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Schuylkill East were not given a choice whether or not to be placed under SEIU monopoly bargaining power. Recently, an NLRB Regional Director ordered workers at Schuylkill East be added to the bargaining unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Schuylkill South.

In 2016, employees at Schuylkill East completely rejected SEIU officials’ attempts to unionize their workplace, with SEIU organizers failing to even file a petition for an election, which would require the signatures of 30% of the hospital workers. However, employees at the nearby separate facility, Schuylkill South, have been unionized for several decades. But, neither SEIU organizers nor NLRB officials have ever produced evidence of Schuylkill East employees’ desire for any kind of union representation.

Nevertheless, in October NLRB Regional Director Dennis Walsh ordered that Schuylkill East workers should be forced into the slightly larger Schuylkill South monopoly bargaining unit, citing the NLRB’s ‘accretion’ policy. The workers at Schuylkill East were never given a vote and were accreted into an unwanted organization for the convenience of union officials.

Walsh previously had been suspended one month without pay by the NLRB, following an Inspector General’s investigation into Walsh for using his position with the NLRB to solicit contributions to a pro-union scholarship fund from union officials from unions with cases at the Labor Board. Reports indicate that the SEIU was one of the unions that made payments to Walsh’s fund.

The employees have now moved to intervene and requested review of the Regional Director’s decision at the NLRB in Washington, DC. They are asking that they be made a party to the case, because it is their freedoms and rights at stake. Specifically, they seek to challenge the accretion order, which imposes forced unionization on them against their will.

“This case demonstrates how the National Labor Relations Act, which is ostensibly about the rights of employees, has been weaponized against independent workers who wish to remain free of union bosses’ so-called representation,” said Mark Mix president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “These employees successfully opposed an SEIU organizing campaign at their workplace only to have a union partisan at the NLRB force the union on them without a vote or any showing of interest.”

“Like so many pro-forced unionism NLRB policies, the ‘accretion doctrine’ is not mandated by the National Labor Relations Act but is the creation of Board bureaucrats seeking to further the interests of union organizers,” continued Mix. “This case gives the new Trump NLRB the opportunity overturn this outrageous doctrine that is being used to trap workers in a union they never asked for and successfully opposed only a year ago.”

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.