Several states are attempting to use industry licensing as a pretense to impose forced union dues on workers in violation of federal labor law

Washington, DC (March 19, 2020) – Today the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation called on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Peter Robb to take action to protect workers subjected to forced unionism schemes interfering with workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) through state licensing requirements showing up in states.

A letter from Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse, Jr. seeks to bring the General Counsel’s attention to a “disturbing trend in state licensing regulation that, if left unchecked, will cause permanent damage to employees’ fundamental Section 7 rights under the National Labor Relations Act.”

The letter highlights how several states have already enacted schemes that infringe on the rights of employees in the medicinal cannabis industry. In New Jersey, for example, the law requires “a private sector employer to enter into a union bargaining agreement within 200 days of commencing operations” or forfeit their license to do business. Such a requirement does not allow employees to decide whether or not they would like to be represented by a union, a clear violation of their rights under the NLRA.

Other states like California and New York require cannabis employers to enter into so-called “labor peace agreements” (LPAs) as a condition of maintaining their license. These agreements violate workers’ privacy and also threaten their right to freely choose whether or not to join a union. In other states, including Pennsylvania and Illinois, state officials will give more “points” to cannabis license applicants who have LPAs, which is effectively preferential treatment for those businesses which have already chosen a union for their employees to work under. The states enacting these schemes have acted at the behest of several national labor unions, with the United Food and Commercial Workers being on the forefront of these forced unionism efforts.

The letter calls on the NLRB to act against these state and local governments whose regulations infringe on the rights of employees to join or not join labor organizations, and lays out the clear legal arguments that support challenging laws that violate the limited employee rights under the NLRA. It points out that such schemes are “directly contrary to the NLRA’s core principle that ‘under Section 9(a), the rule is that the employees pick the union; the union does not pick the employees.’”

In 2019, New Jersey amended its medicinal cannabis laws, requiring license applicants to sign “labor peace agreements.” According to the amended law, applicants must maintain and comply with an LPA as a condition of keeping their license. In addition, these private sector employers are forced to sign monopoly bargaining agreements within 200 days of opening, and if they do not, they lose the right to do business in the state. Essentially, the letter points out, “the state pressures employees to sign up for unionization solely to keep their employers afloat.”

Furthermore, the Foundation points out how New Jersey indirectly imposes monopoly representation on workers by giving priority to license applicants that already have agreements with union officials or who promise to use their “best efforts to utilize union labor in the construction or retrofit of the facilities associated with the permitted entity.”

The letter also points out that the NLRB has the clear authority to take action against such state activity that threatens the rights guaranteed to workers by the NLRA.

“The NLRB is tasked with protecting the rights of workers across the nation, including their right not to be coerced into union ranks. Our letter to NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb shows the pressing need for the agency to step in and take action against states and local governments who have passed laws that infringe on the rights of workers by mandating these businesses hand over their workers to union forced dues ranks,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.

“Absent swift action from the NLRB to challenge these state laws that fly in the face of the National Labor Relations Act, you can be certain that Big Labor allied politicians across the country will soon seek to force workers in other states or industries into union forced dues ranks under the auspices of occupational licensing.”

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.