UFCW bosses imposed through abuse-prone ‘card check’; have moved to ‘merge’ store with unionized locations to block efforts to remove union

Chester, VA (November 6, 2026) – Employees at a Richmond-area Kroger grocery store have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking a “decertification” election to remove unwanted United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 union bosses from their workplace. The workers’ efforts are spearheaded by Kimberly Stratton, who filed the petition with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the National Labor Relations Act, a task that includes administering elections to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions.

Stratton’s petition, seeking a secret-ballot election among the 187 grocery employees at Kroger’s 10800 Iron Bridge Road location in Chester, was initiated by the employees after UFCW “representation” was imposed on the workers via the abuse-prone “card check” process. Card check allows union bosses to bypass the secret-ballot election process, which has long been recognized as the most secure and reliable way to determine if a majority of employees actually support unionization.

During card check drives, groups of union organizers can repeatedly pressure workers face-to-face to sign authorization cards, and there are many documented cases of organizers using intimidation tactics, lies, and sometimes even threats of violence to acquire cards. Each signed card then counts as a “vote” to impose the union on all employees.

The employees’ decertification election request is especially important because union officials are currently demanding the bargaining unit be “merged” into a massive bargaining unit of thousands of employees at more than 20 stores across Virginia. Once merged, under the NLRB’s non-statutory “merger doctrine,” it would become virtually impossible for employees to remove the union, since independent workers would then need to collect signatures from employees they have never met at locations spread across the state just to get the NLRB to consider, let alone schedule, an election.

Virginia is one of 26 states with a Right to Work law, which safeguards workers by making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary. However, even in Right to Work states, federal law grants union officials the power to impose their exclusive “representation” on every employee in a bargaining unit, including those who never voted for, joined, or supported the union.

In June, Foundation staff attorneys submitted a formal rulemaking petition to the NLRB asking the new Board to initiate rulemaking to expand worker free choice and end various non-statutory policies that disenfranchise employees seeking to remove unwanted unions. The petition calls on the Board to eliminate the “merger doctrine” and the “card check bar” created by the Biden-era NLRB to restrict workers’ decertification rights after a union is imposed through card check.

“Time and again employees like Ms. Stratton and her colleagues are forced, against their will, into union ranks by union bosses relying on biased NLRB policies designed to keep unions in power no matter the wishes of rank-and-file employees,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This situation shows how union bosses use these policies, like the totally created, non-statutory ‘merger doctrine,’ to trap workers in union ranks they oppose in perpetuity.”

“Here UFCW bosses are attempting to use the time afforded by the ‘card check bar’ to impose a contract on these employees that would not only block any decertification attempt for up to three years but also merge them into a virtually decertification-proof bargaining unit of thousands of employees at numerous locations,” added Mix. “Cases like this show why the new Board majority must take immediate action to defend employees’ statutory right to vote out unions they oppose.”

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.