Rather than face vote to strip union officials of their forced representation powers, Teamsters officials concede defeat

Santa Rosa, CA (March 9, 2023) – Valdivia Trucking Co. workers in California are finally free of unwanted Teamsters Local 665 union officials after three months of delays created by the union officials. The workers’ bid to remove the union recently became official when, rather than face a decertification vote of Valdivia workers whether to strip the union of its power, the union preemptively “disclaimed” interest in representation and walked away from the workers.

Valdivia Trucking worker John Murdick received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation while filing for a decertification vote. His decertification petition filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) included the signatures of a significant majority of the workers at the facility.

The workers’ petition was filed on December 16, 2022, and quickly resulted in a stipulated election agreement for a decertification vote on January 6. However, the vote was delayed by preexisting “blocking charges” the union filed with the NLRB. This is a union tactic often used to delay workers’ decertification elections, because union officials fear if the vote goes forward the union may lose.

As a result of these blocking charges against the employer the vote was delayed three months, until March, when the blocking charges were finally closed. This permitted the vote to proceed. It was at that point the union officials notified the company’s lawyers and the NLRB that it disclaimed interest in “representing” the Valdivia Trucking employees. That gave the workers the outcome they sought, albeit delayed by nearly three months.

The NLRB’s union decertification process is prone to union boss-created roadblocks. Foundation-backed reforms the NLRB adopted in 2020 made it somewhat easier for workers to remove unwanted union officials. However, the Biden NLRB is attempting to roll back these protections and make it much harder to decertify a union.

For example, the 2020 reforms blocked union officials from resubmitting overlapping charges, which often contain unverified and unrelated allegations of employer actions, designed to delay the process further. Had these reforms not been in place, the three-month delay for these workers could have been extended indefinitely.

Worker interest in removing unwanted unions is growing nationwide, with National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys fielding numerous requests for free legal assistance in decertification cases, like the one brought by Murdick and his coworkers.

The process to decertify a union should be simple. Federal law provides that workers can hold decertification votes in most instances as long as they have a petition with the signatures of at least 30% of workers in a bargaining unit. However, rules created by NLRB bureaucrats combined with legal tactics deployed by union lawyers often mean workers face legal hurdles in just getting the opportunity to hold a vote whether to remove an unwanted union.

The NLRB’s own data show that, currently, 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.

“The Valdivia Trucking decertification situation shows how union officials often use underhanded tactics to remain in power and collect dues from hard-working people as long as possible, even though they know a majority of workers oppose their so-called representation,” observed Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation.

“Although we are extremely satisfied that the Valdivia workers have exercised their legal right to be union-free, we cannot neglect the importance the 2020 Foundation-backed reforms played in this case,” Mix continues. “If the Biden-appointed NLRB is able to roll back these reforms, as they are attempting to do, workers like those at Valdivia may be trapped in union ranks they oppose for many months and even years.”

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.