Claiming ‘Democracy Under Attack,’ Biden Makes It Harder to Oust Unions
BY THE CENTER SQUAREBy Bethany Blankley (The Center Square)
A day after President
Joe Biden claimed “American democracy is under attack,” his administration took
action to make it more difficult for employees to vote on whether or not they
want to join a union.
At a Democrat Party
campaign event on Wednesday, Biden said democracy is under attack by the
“MAGA Republican Party,” referring to those who support former President Donald
Trump.
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“We must vote knowing who we
have been and what we’re at risk of becoming,” Biden said. “We must vote
knowing what’s at stake and not just the policy of the moment – but
institutions that have held us together, as we’ve sought a more perfect union,
are also at stake.”
The next day, his
administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced it would start
the process to rescind a 2020 rule implemented to protect workers’ right to
vote on removing union representation.
The NLRB adopted the Election
Protection Rule in 2020 to reform several processes, including union officials
filing “blocking charges” to prevent employees from voting out union
representation from their workplace. Filing blocking charges by making one or
multiple allegations against an employer prevents employees from voting, or
their ballots are impounded because litigation ensues over the charges. This
process often takes months or years to resolve, during which union
representation and dues deductions continue.
“The Biden-appointed NLRB
majority – two of whom were union lawyers when nominated for their seats on the
Board – is once again protecting union boss power to the detriment of the
statutory rights of rank-and-file workers,” National Right to Work Foundation
President Mark Mix said. “Make no mistake, reversing the Election Protection
Rule will mean more workers trapped in forced union ranks they oppose, and more
denials of worker requests for basic secret-ballot votes regarding union
status.
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“The NLRB’s own statistics
indicate that workers are currently seeking to throw out unwanted unions at the
highest rate in years. Yet rather than reflect on why so many workers want
nothing to do with union so-called ‘representation,’ the anti-worker response
of the Biden Administration and their Big Labor allies is to build a wall to
keep workers in unions, or to stop them from even holding votes to oust
incumbent union bosses.”
According to NLRB data, among petitions filed to hold elections to install or remove a
union, a unionized private-sector worker was more than twice as likely to
attempt to decertify union representation than a nonunion worker was to
unionize, the foundation notes.
While a pro-union group, The
Worker Power Coalition, argues the “surge in worker organizing is the largest
in more than 50 years,” and the data shows a 53% increase in union
representation petitions, a Horton
Law PLLC – JDSupra analysis says otherwise.
It said the average number of representative petitions filed in the first three
quarters of FY 2017, 2018, and 2019 were “almost exactly the same number as
were filed in the first nine months of FY 2022.” Decertification filings
increased in FY 2022 by 42% compared to a 36% increase in representation
petitions filed.
Additionally, one year after
the 2020 Election Protection Rule went into effect, NRWF attorneys assisted
over 7,000 employees at 54 workplaces in exercising their right to hold votes
to oust union officials.
The 2020 Election Protection
Rule also substantially eliminated the so-called “voluntary recognition bar”
that had enabled union officials to block workers from requesting a
secret-ballot election after a union had been installed through a “card check”
drive. Such a drive occurs when professional union organizers approach employees
to get them to sign cards that count as official “votes” for unionization.
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The rule change allowed
employees to have a secret-ballot election to determine how much support a
union might have, alleviating “pressure from coworkers and union organizers
[who] often force workers to sign off on unionization they would not have
accepted had their decision been private,” the foundation explains.
The foundation argues that if
the Election Protection Rule were to be fully eliminated, it would be more
difficult for employees to vote to oust unions. Even if they can vote, the
results might not be made public for months or even years due to litigation
over blocking charges. And employees forced to unionize through a card check
drive could be barred for years from holding a secret-ballot vote, the
foundation notes.
The proposed rule must now be
subjected to a comment period that ends on Jan. 17, 2023.
In addition to the latest
proposed change, the NLRB has taken steps to revive the Joy Silk doctrine, a
1949 board decision that would make it much easier for unions to form without a
potentially-challenging secret ballot election. The change wouldn’t be subject
to a comment period, rather the board simply issuing a General Counsel memo
telling regional labor offices to conduct business as such.
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