14 Nov 2025

After Year-Long Effort, McDowell County Commission on Aging Employees Free Themselves From SEIU Union Bosses

Posted in News Releases

Majority of employees signed petition demanding Commission stop bargaining with SEIU; success follows months of union stonewalling

Welch, WV (November 14, 2025) – Following an effort lasting more than a year, employees of senior homecare nonprofit McDowell County Commission on Aging have successfully freed themselves from the control of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1199 officials. Commission employee John Reeves spearheaded the union removal effort with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

The success follows Reeves’ submission of a petition in which the majority of his fellow employees demanded that their employer stop recognizing the SEIU as their exclusive “representative.” Reeves submitted the petition to Commission management in late October. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), an employer may not engage in bargaining with union officials that lack majority support in a workplace. Commission management announced on November 4 that they had withdrawn recognition from the SEIU union.

West Virginia is a Right to Work state, meaning that union officials cannot enforce contracts that require workers to pay dues or be fired. In contrast, in states like neighboring Pennsylvania and Ohio that lack Right to Work protections, union officials can mandate dues or fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job. However, in both Right to Work and non-Right to Work states, union bosses have exclusive representation power over every worker in a unionized workplace, even those who voted against or otherwise oppose the union.

SEIU Officials Used Litigation to Block Workers From Voting

The effort by Commission employees to oust SEIU union bosses started back in June 2024, when Reeves submitted a union decertification petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, a task that includes administering votes to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions.

Commission management and SEIU chiefs agreed to the terms of a union decertification vote, which Reeves and his coworkers participated in on July 9, 2024. However, NLRB officials held up the ballot count, claiming that SEIU officials had unfair labor practice charges pending against Commission management.

After six months of delays, Commission officials and SEIU union bosses announced they had reached a settlement in the unfair labor practice case – but a provision of that settlement stipulated that they would “not entertain a new decertification for a…period of four months.” A regional NLRB official approved this settlement in its entirety, effectively tossing out Reeves’ and his coworkers’ ballots. Reeves urged the NLRB in Washington, DC, to reverse this decision, as the regional NLRB had never proven the alleged unfair labor practices, nor had the Commission admitted to them in the settlement.

As of November 2025, Reeves’ appeal was still pending, but he and his coworkers have now successfully removed the union through a different process.

“Mr. Reeves’ and his coworkers’ situation shows that, in practice, NLRB bureaucrats will frequently stifle workers’ rights simply to advance the interests of union officials or management,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “That is antithetical to the overarching purpose of federal labor law, which is to protect workers’ free choice, not protect incumbent union bosses’ power.

“Currently, the union decertification process is overly complex and prone to legal manipulation, delays, and derailment,” Mix added. “It is in dire need of reform, and both the NLRB and federal legislators have a role to play to prevent workers from being trapped under union so-called ‘representation’ opposed by a majority of employees.”

6 Mar 2025

Long Island Health Employee Challenges Federal Labor Board Policy After Board Blocks Her and Coworkers from Voting Out SEIU Union

Posted in News Releases

NLRB Regional Office used technicality to cancel election that workers requested and was previously agreed to by union and company

Long Island, NY (March 6, 2025) – Laura Gallo, a senior patient representative at Sun River Health, is asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to overturn a regional NLRB official’s decision blocking her and her coworkers from having a vote to remove officials of the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East union from their workplace. Gallo is receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

Gallo submitted a petition in August 2024 seeking an election to decertify the union. She followed instructions from NLRB agents in ensuring she submitted enough signatures from her coworkers to trigger the vote. However, after the NLRB accepted her petition and the company, union, and Gallo herself had come to an agreement on the election logistics, NLRB Region 29’s Director abruptly announced she was dismissing Gallo’s petition.

This decision – which may have been prompted by backchannel communications between the union and NLRB that Gallo was not party to – was not fully explained until February 13, 2025. In an order, the Regional Director claimed that the union was actually immune to employee-requested decertification attempts because of a non-statutory NLRB policy known as the “contract bar,” which only gives workers a small window to submit decertification petitions while a union contract is in place. The Regional Director issued this order despite the fact that Gallo did file her petition within the contract bar window. However, the order explained that because Gallo had submitted one tranche of signatures in support of her petition just days after this window expired, her petition would be dismissed under the NLRB’s Excel II precedent.

Gallo is now arguing in a Request for Review that the NLRB in Washington, D.C., should overturn this decision and let her and her coworkers’ requested vote go forward. Among other contentions, Gallo’s Request for Review maintains that the NLRB should throw out the Excel II precedent, which prevents decertification petitions from being processed (even when filed on time) when the signatures in support of the petition are not received within the contract bar’s window period.

Long Island Healthcare Worker Painstakingly Gathered Employee Support for Union Ouster Vote Across Large Work Unit – But NLRB Blocked Effort on Technicality

The Request for Review emphasizes that Gallo started the decertification process pro se (without a lawyer) and had to collect signatures from a large work unit which spanned hundreds of workers from Sun River facilities across Long Island. This, the Request for Review explains, “illustrates why the Board’s harsh, one size fits all, rule in Excel II discriminates against petitioners new to NLRB processes who otherwise act diligently and promptly comply with guidance from Board agents.” Gallo points out in her filing that even the Board agents she was working with to file her petition may have been unaware of this restriction.

“Petitioners, and particularly pro se petitioners, should receive the benefit of the doubt when confronted with large and unwieldy bargaining units when it is difficult to estimate the total number of unit members and collect sufficient valid signatures,” the Request for Review argues.

“Contract Bar” Lets Union Officials Insulate Themselves From Workers’ Free Choice

Foundation staff attorneys have aided many workers over the years that union officials have trapped in union ranks using the contract bar gambit. In March 2024, Foundation attorneys helped nurses from multiple locations of Palo Alto (CA) Medical Foundation escape from unwanted International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) union officials who tried to argue that a contract bar should have canceled the nurses’ effort. In late 2021, hundreds of poultry workers at Mountaire Farms in Delaware were finally able to vote themselves free from United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union officials after the union had kept them trapped for almost two years pursuant to a contract bar. Foundation attorneys provided them substantial legal aid at the outset of their effort.

“Ms. Gallo’s case pulls back the curtain to show how stacked NLRB policies are against individual workers,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Using a filing time technicality to snatch away the only opportunity hundreds of Sun River employees will have in years to exercise their right to vote on whether 1199SEIU union officials deserve to remain in control over them is outrageous by itself. But the root of these arbitrary time restrictions is the ‘contract bar’ – a policy which lets union bosses and employers unilaterally enforce contracts that block workers from voting the union out. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of a standard that prioritizes union bosses’ power over workers’ choice.

“President Trump’s new appointees to the NLRB must look to the stories of workers like Ms. Gallo as glaring evidence of why the ‘contract bar’ and similar restrictions need to be removed,” Mix added.

13 Nov 2024

Long Island Healthcare Employee Charges Union Officials With Illicit Attempt to Prevent Workers from Voting Union Out

Posted in News Releases

Brief: 1199SEIU officials engaged in backchannel communications with federal labor board to block vote; same union is facing ouster effort by NJ workers as well

Long Island, NY (November 13, 2024) – Laura Gallo, a Senior Patient Representative at Sun River Health, Inc., has successfully reversed an attempt by United Healthcare Workers East (an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union) officials to snuff out a petition in which she and her coworkers are requesting an election to remove the union from Long Island workplaces. Gallo, who submitted the union decertification petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on her own in August, is now receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, which includes administering elections to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions. Gallo and her coworkers are seeking a vote that, if successful, will end the 1199SEIU union’s control over nearly 230 Sun River Health workers across Long Island, including nutritionists, nurses, call center employees, and others.

Despite Gallo’s decertification petition containing enough employee signatures to satisfy instructions provided by an NLRB agent, an NLRB Regional Director dismissed her petition in October without giving her an opportunity to address what were alleged deficiencies with her filing. The dismissal also contradicted an NLRB agent’s earlier declaration that the decertification petition was valid.

After Gallo enlisted the help of Foundation attorneys, they quickly filed a brief challenging NLRB Region 29’s dismissal of the petition, which additionally pointed out that the dismissal may have occurred as the result of illicit backchannel communications between NLRB Region 29 and 1199SEIU officials.

Now, following the Foundation’s filing, NLRB Region 29 has agreed to reconsider the petition.

Gallo and her coworkers are based in New York, which lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector employees. As a result, union bosses can legally enforce contracts that require workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job. In contrast, in Right to Work states, union membership and union financial support are the free choice of each individual worker.

A successful decertification vote strips union officials of both their forced-dues power and their ability to impose union monopoly bargaining contracts on every employee in a workplace, including those who oppose the union’s presence.

Brief: Federal Labor Board Officials Unilaterally Blocked Workers’ Petition Based on Secret Union Filing

Gallo’s brief argues that NLRB Region 29 “cannot unilaterally dismiss” Gallo’s petition because doing so would “strip Petitioner and her fellow workers of their [rights under federal labor law] to seek a representation election once they have raised a question of representation and the relevant Regional Office has approved [the petition’s signatures].”

The brief further asserts that NLRB Region 29 dismissed the petition based on documents that 1199SEIU officials covertly filed in clear violation of the NLRB’s notice requirements. “Here, the Region approved the [petition’s signatures] on August 9, 2024, and allowed the petition to proceed to a hearing all while conducting a clandestine investigation at the request of the Union without any opportunity to challenge [the regional NLRB’s determination],” says the brief. Whether rejection of the petition took place at the behest of the union or not, the brief explains, there was no legal basis for such action.

Clara Maass Medical Center Employees in NJ Also Seek to Remove 1199SEIU

The 1199SEIU union is currently facing opposition from other New York City-area healthcare workers. Foundation-backed registered nurses at Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville Township, NJ, recently filed a union decertification petition seeking a removal vote against the same union. Despite having the requisite number of signatures to prompt a vote, the NLRB is preventing the nurses from voting due to unproven allegations of misconduct that 1199SEIU union officials are leveling at hospital management. Recent rulemaking by the Biden-Harris NLRB permits such allegations, also known as “blocking charges,” to stymie worker-requested decertification elections.

“Officials of 1199SEIU clearly value power far above the will and rights of the workers they claim to ‘represent,’” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Ms. Gallo stepped up on behalf of her coworkers at Sun River Health and filed a petition in which many of them expressed a desire to vote the union out. But 1199SEIU officials conducted shady proceedings behind her back to scuttle her petition and maintain their control over the workplace, likely thinking Gallo didn’t have the formal legal knowledge to fight back.

“While Foundation attorneys have scored a victory against 1199SEIU’s shameful attempt to strip Ms. Gallo and her coworkers of their right to vote on whether the union deserves to stay in their workplace, they’re unfortunately not the only employees that 1199SEIU is attempting to disenfranchise,” Mix added. “Healthcare workers in the New York City metro area and beyond should reach out to the Foundation for free legal aid in obtaining a vote to remove unwanted union officials – especially in the wake of Biden-Harris Administration rulemaking that makes it much easier for union officials to block worker-requested votes.”