Delaware GFP Mobile Mix Supply driver attacked for opposing the IUOE Local 542 Union

Wilmington, DE (March 20, 2023) – GFP Mobile Mix employee Tanner Bradigan has filed federal charges against the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 542 after union officials threatened violent retribution against workers who refused to support the union and later led an effort to remove it. Bradigan and his coworkers are receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in this and a related case.

On March 8, 2023, Foundation attorneys filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for Bradigan against the union. In the charges, Bradigan stated that IUOE union officials threatened to physically attack every worker who opposed union control in a December union meeting.

According to the charge, some of the Mobile Mix workers, including Bradigan, went to the union meeting in an attempt to learn more about what union officials were claiming it could obtain for employees at the bargaining table. When they stated that they would not be supporting the union, IUOE union officials became aggressive and began screaming at Bradigan and his coworkers, threatening to fight anyone who refused to support the union.

Vance Pennington, Bradigan’s coworker, later submitted a petition on February 2 to the NLRB requesting a decertification election whether to formally remove the union from their workplace. Their petition included the signatures of more than the enough workers in the bargaining unit to trigger the decertification election.

Threatening opponents of the union with violence isn’t the only tactic IUOE union officials have deployed in their attempt to counter the decertification effort, however. IUOE officials have so far been able to stop the vote from taking place using so-called “blocking charges,” a commonly used union tactic meant to delay or shut down decertification petitions entirely.

Foundation staff attorneys recently responded to the union’s allegations by submitting five affidavits from Mobile Mix workers corroborating that the petition for dismissal was completely unrelated to the allegations in the union’s blocking charges against GFP Mobile Mix, but rather legitimate grievances, like the union official’s threats of violence.

The supply drivers at Mobile Mix are not the only workers who are attempting to remove an unwanted union. The NLRB’s own data show that, today, a unionized private sector worker is more than twice as likely to be involved in a decertification effort as a nonunion worker is to be involved in a unionization campaign.

Unfortunately, the NLRB’s union decertification process is prone to Board-created roadblocks, with the Mobile Mix workers’ situation being just the latest example. However, Foundation-backed NLRB reforms from 2020 have made it somewhat easier for workers to remove unwanted union officials.

Without these Foundation-backed reforms, workers could have their decertification votes delayed virtually automatically by any unproven union blocking charges, giving union bosses the power to trap workers in union ranks they oppose nearly indefinitely. Under the Foundation-backed reforms most votes will take place promptly, with union blocking claims adjudicated later after the votes have been counted.

“The Foundation will not stop fighting for the workers of Mobile Mix regardless of the malicious union tactics at play in this case,” stated Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Workers should never fear retaliation from union bosses for exercising their rights—physical or otherwise.”

“The very fact that IUOE bosses will physically threaten workers who oppose them shows these workers have ample reason, independent of whatever claims union lawyers have made in blocking charges, for wanting to end this union’s so-called ‘representation,’” added 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.