The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, January/February 2021 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.

Housekeepers say employer illegally assisted union organizers during unionization push

Yotel housekeepers (from left) Lady Laura Javier, Cindy J. Alarcon Vasquez and Yesica Perez Barrios got the NLRB to prosecute union and hotel officials for using a coercive “Card Check” drive to force them under union control.

BOSTON, MA – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, in December 2019 four housekeepers at the Yotel hotel in Boston filed charges against their employer and UNITE HERE Local 26, after the hotel illegally assisted union officials with foisting their “representation” on workers during a “Card Check” organizing drive.

Now, in response to the charges filed for Cindy J. Alarcon Vasquez, Lady Laura Javier, Yesica Perez Barrios and Danela Guzman, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Regional Director has issued a complaint to prosecute the hotel and UNITE HERE for violating the housekeepers’ rights under federal law.

Agreeing with the workers’ Foundation staff attorneys, the complaint charges the hotel with illegally assisting union organizers by providing the kind of assistance the Board has long held to be illegal when it benefits workers’ decertification efforts, and charges the union with illegally accepting the unlawful assistance.

NLRB: Employer Illegally Aided Union Campaign

The NLRB has long held that an employer taints employees’ efforts to remove a union if it gives those workers support that amounts to more than “ministerial aid.” Under that standard, the Board has held that an employer can’t provide a list of bargaining unit employees or allow use of company resources when employees are trying to remove a union, because this assistance would tarnish the results of the election.

Foundation attorneys in this case argue that, under the same standard, Yotel Boston similarly tainted the union’s organizing campaign by providing assistance to UNITE HERE union organizers.

The charges, which resulted in the NLRB complaint, say the hotel illegally assisted the union’s coercive “Card Check” drive, during which employees were pressured by union operatives into signing union cards. These cards were later counted as “votes,” and were used to bypass a secret-ballot election that would have determined whether the workers actually support union representation.

Foundation Cases Challenge Unequal Standard

The case is not the first in which the NLRB has addressed this double standard. In July, NLRB Region 19 issued a similar complaint in another case involving a hotel worker whose employer illegally assisted UNITE HERE Local 8 union officials in its “Card Check” drive at Embassy Suites in Seattle. There the NLRB also agreed that the employer had provided more than “ministerial aid,” and therefore UNITE HERE officials “did not represent an uncoerced majority of the unit.”

“The NLRB is finally addressing the double standard that for too long has favored union bosses in their coercive “Card Check” unionization drives,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union bosses pressure workers and get illegal assistance from employers to impose their so-called representation on workers, but they cry foul when that same assistance is given to workers attempting to remove unwanted forced representation.

“With these two complaints against UNITE HERE union bosses, the Board is correctly finding that what qualifies as more than ‘ministerial assistance and support,’ and violates the National Labor Relations Act, cannot depend on whether the employer is helping outside union organizers impose unionization on workers or is assisting workers in exercising their right to remove an unwanted union,” Mix added