Houston, TX (August 12, 2014) – Three years after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) eliminated workers’ right to challenge union card check recognition with a secret ballot vote, the very workers involved in that case have petitioned for an election to remove the unwanted union from their workplace.

In 2007, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys secured a new NLRB precedent in Dana Corp. which held that workers may collect signatures to request a secret ballot election during a 45-day window period following notice that their employer has recognized a union based on a card check organizing drive. The ruling was intended to counteract coercive practices frequently associated with card checks, which allow organizers to bully or mislead employees into signing cards that count as “votes” toward unionization.

In 2011, the Obama NLRB overturned the Dana precedent in Lamons Gasket. In that case, the NLRB denied the gasket and bolt manufacturing workers, and thousands of workers nationwide since, the right to challenge union card check recognition with a secret ballot vote. As a result, workers currently must wait up to three years after the date of the first monopoly bargaining agreement between their employer and union officials before they can file a petition for a secret ballot vote.

Now, almost three years to the date since the NLRB overturned Dana, Lamons Gasket workers, with the help of Foundation attorneys, filed for a secret ballot election to remove the United Steelworker union bosses who obtained control over their workplace through a coercive card check campaign. The election is now scheduled for August 20, 2014.

“The Obama NLRB has denied justice for these Lamons Gasket workers for three years,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Now that these workers finally have the overdue opportunity to determine their own union representation, this case proves once again that the Obama Labor Board’s contorted ruling to kill the Dana Corp. precedent is a complete farce designed to further empower union operatives to steamroll workers into union ranks.”

“President Obama and his hand-picked bureaucrats, operating under the guise of upholding federal labor law that purports to protect worker rights, are striving to make it next to impossible for independent-minded workers to stand up for their rights or remove an unwanted union hierarchy,” 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.