28 Jul 2025

Michigan-Based Rieth-Riley Asphalt Worker Submits Legal Brief Urging 6th Circuit to Protect Workers’ Right to Vote Out Unpopular Union

Posted in News Releases

Appeals Court brief: Labor Board violated federal law and its own rules to stifle Rieth-Riley workers’ statutory right to vote to remove unwanted IUOE union

Cincinnati, OH (July 28, 2025) – Rayalan Kent, a Michigan-based employee of asphalt paving company Rieth-Riley, has just filed an amicus brief with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that could restore a substantial amount of power to workers in deciding whether they should be subject to union control. Kent has received free legal representation from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys since 2020 when he began his efforts to vote the union out of his workplace.

In the Sixth Circuit case Rieth-Riley Construction Co. vs. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Kent’s employer is arguing against the NLRB’s dismissal of valid petitions backed by Kent and his coworkers, which asked the Board to administer a vote at his workplace to remove (or “decertify”) the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 324. That contention is part of Rieth-Riley’s larger defense of its decision not to continue negotiating with the IUOE union.

While Kent and his fellow employees were eventually able to exercise their right to vote on the IUOE, the NLRB in 2022 dismissed his petitions and halted the election, declining to count the already-cast ballots just hours before the vote tally, calling it a “merit-determination” dismissal. This dismissal was based on unfair labor practice allegations the IUOE filed against Rieth-Riley management in 2018. But the NLRB never held a hearing on whether those alleged practices had any connection to Kent and his coworkers’ desire to oust the union.

Kent’s brief urges the Sixth Circuit to use Rieth-Riley Construction Co. as an opportunity to invalidate the NLRB’s “merit-determination” dismissal policy. The brief also asks the Court to order the NLRB to take the long-overdue step of counting the ballots in Mr. Kent’s decertification election, so he and his coworkers can properly exercise their right to vote on the union.

Federal Labor Board’s Actions Violated Statutory Authority and Agency’s Own Regulations

Kent’s amicus brief argues that the NLRB’s use of “merit-determination” dismissals – a “blocking charge” policy – violates the agency’s statutory authority and the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law the NLRB is responsible for enforcing. The NLRA requires that the Board hold a hearing and an election when employees submit a valid petition requesting a union decertification vote. However, “by dismissing Mr. Kent’s decertification petitions based on the mere allegations in the Union’s blocking charge, the Region and the Board failed to comply with Congress’ directive that the Board ‘shall’ conduct a hearing and ‘shall’ conduct an election when a question of representation exists,” says the amicus brief.

The brief also points out that the NLRB’s “merit-determination” dismissal policy violates rules the agency itself promulgated. In 2020, the NLRB finalized its Election Protection Rule (EPR), which, among other things, mandated that “blocking charges” could no longer stop workers from exercising their right to vote in a union decertification election. The EPR instead required the NLRB to hold elections and tally votes before dealing with any allegations surrounding the employer conduct. “Here, the Board is refusing to follow its own rules by dismissing Mr. Kent’s decertification petitions because of speculation, unproven allegations, and a confidential ‘investigation’ to which he is not privy,” the brief reads.

“In this brief, Rayalan Kent and his coworkers speak for all independent-minded American workers, whose clear right under federal law to vote to remove union officials they disapprove of is gravely threatened by the existence of the NLRB’s various invented non-statutory policies,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union bosses should not be able to unilaterally override this right, and the Sixth Circuit needs to restore to workers their fundamental rights of free choice under the National Labor Relations Act.”

21 Jun 2022

National Right to Work Foundation Slams Decision Trapping Michigan Construction Workers in Unpopular Union

Posted in News Releases

NLRB rules that ballots employees already cast in vote to oust union cannot be counted, highlighting Labor Board’s pro-union boss bias

Washington, DC (June 21, 2022) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, has permitted the destruction of hundreds of ballots already cast by Michigan Rieth-Riley Construction Company workers in an election whether to oust International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) union officials. The decision shuts down a years-long effort by Rieth-Riley employees to remove IUOE Local 324 officials, allowing the union to stifle the workers’ vote with questionable “blocking charges” against Rieth-Riley management.

Rieth-Riley employee Rayalan Kent led the effort to vote out IUOE union officials. With the assistance of National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, he submitted two petitions in 2020 with enough worker support to trigger the NLRB’s administration of a “decertification vote.” A vote finally occurred in October 2020, but Regional NLRB officials in Detroit ruled, just hours before the ballots were to be counted, that union boss-concocted “blocking charges” invalidated the employees’ petition. The NLRB in Washington has now affirmed that decision.

Both rulings fly in the face of Foundation-backed reforms the NLRB adopted in 2020 regarding “blocking charges,” which provided that ballots in union decertification elections should be counted first before any unfair labor practice charges surrounding the election are dealt with. Moreover, even prior NLRB precedent required that an evidentiary hearing be held to determine whether there is any “causal nexus” between union allegations of employer misconduct and employee dissatisfaction engendering a union decertification effort. But the NLRB never held any such hearing in this case.

Settlements Foundation attorneys won in 2021 for Rieth-Riley employees Rob Nevins and Jesse London indicate that malfeasance by IUOE officials, not Rieth-Riley misdeeds, likely caused the company’s workers to push for the union’s ouster. London and Nevins decided to end their union memberships and keep working to support their families despite a union boss-ordered strike in 2019.

Nevins charged union officials with threatening to “blackball” him if he didn’t strike, and London reported that IUOE officials refused to hand over health insurance premium money they owed him for time he participated in the strike. The settlements mandated that IUOE union bosses not discriminate against London and Nevins for exercising their right to refrain from union membership, and also ordered them to pay London the health insurance premium money he was owed.

“The current decision demonstrates how the NLRB and its bureaucrats have twisted a law that is allegedly designed to protect the free choice rights of rank-and-file workers. Instead of supporting workers’ rights, this Board and past Boards have weaponized the National Labor Relations Act against workers solely to entrench union boss power,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Rather than apply the letter and spirit of the 2020 Election Protection rule, Joe Biden’s NLRB has undermined and rendered useless even those modest reforms. Given this awful ruling, it is now likely that Rieth-Riley workers’ votes to remove the union will simply be dropped in a trash can.”

Mix added: “Workers have a statutory right to vote out a union they oppose and NLRB bureaucrats should not be able to nullify that right on the basis of unproven and often unrelated allegations of employer misconduct.”

5 Sep 2020

At Foundation’s Urging, NLRB Eliminates Barriers to Removing Unpopular Unions

Posted in Newsletter Articles

The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, July/August 2020 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.

New rule curtails union boss tactics used to block employees’ right to vote out unions they oppose

The Foundation’s comments helped the NLRB scrap its policy allowing “blocking charges,” which IUOE bosses used to stymie Rieth-Riley worker Rayalan Kent and his coworkers’ right to vote them out.

WASHINGTON, DC – Following two rounds of comments from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and over 8,000 petitions from Right to Work supporters, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued final rules substantially eliminating two pernicious tactics used by union bosses to stop workers from exercising their right to hold a vote to remove an unwanted union.

The NLRB’s new rules, finalized in April, dealt blows to the non-statutory “blocking charge” and “voluntary recognition bar” policies and to forced unionism schemes in the construction industry. All three reforms were encouraged by the Foundation’s initial January comments to the federal agency, which pressed the agency to get rid of all restrictions on decertification elections that are not mandated by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

New Rule Knocks Down Three Rights Restrictions Targeted by Foundation

The new rule essentially eliminates union “blocking charges,” which union bosses file to prevent rank-and-file employees from exercising their right to vote to remove a union. Under the old rule, unions could block workers’ requested votes from taking place for months or even years by making one or multiple allegations against the employer, which were often unrelated to the employees’ decertification petition and frequently unsubstantiated.

Under the new rule, union charges cannot indefinitely stall the employees’ vote from taking place and in most instances the vote will occur without delay. Additionally, as the Foundation advocated, the NLRB modified its proposed rule so that after the employees vote, the ballots will be tallied and released in the vast majority of cases instead of being impounded and not counted.

This is a vast improvement on the NLRB’s original proposal to utilize a “vote and impound” system regarding employees’ decertification votes. Although such a system would have permitted employees to vote despite “blocking charges,” the results could have been withheld for months or years until the underlying “blocking charges” were resolved. Foundation staff attorneys argued against such a system in their January comments, pointing out that it would “frustrate and confuse employees who may have to wait years to see the election’s results,” while leaving the union in power the entire time.

The NLRB also substantially eliminated the so-called “voluntary recognition bar” policy. In the past, union officials had used this policy to block workers from requesting a secret-ballot election after the union had been installed as their monopoly bargaining agent through abuse-prone “Card Check” drives that bypass the NLRB-supervised secret-ballot election process. The Trump NLRB’s new rule reinstates a system secured by Foundation staff attorneys for workers in the 2007 Dana Corp. NLRB decision.

Under the Dana Corp. system, employees subject to “Card Check” drives and so-called “voluntary recognition” can promptly file for a secret-ballot election to contest the installation of a monopoly representative at their workplace. Despite thousands of workers using this process to secure secret-ballot votes after being unionized through “Card Checks,” the Obama NLRB overturned Dana in 2010 over the objections of Foundation staff attorneys in a case called Lamons Gasket.

Additionally, the NLRB made changes advocated by the Foundation’s January comments to crack down on schemes in the construction industry where employers and union bosses are allowed to unilaterally install a union in a workplace without first providing any proof of majority union support among the workers.

Foundation Fights to Enforce Workers’ Right to Remove Unwanted Unions

Foundation staff attorneys are currently providing free legal aid to several workers who are challenging union boss attempts to stymie their right to vote out an unwanted union, even in light of the new NLRB protections.

In Michigan, NLRB Region 7 officials stifled Rieth-Riley Construction Company employee Rayalan Kent’s decertification petition that he submitted for his coworkers. Region 7 officials told him that the election would be held up “pending the investigation” of charges filed by Operating Engineers (IUOE) union bosses against Rieth- Riley, but never explained to him why IUOE bosses’ allegations were significant enough to affect their right to vote.

Foundation staff attorneys in April submitted a request for review for Kent and his coworkers to the NLRB in Washington, D.C., asking that the Board immediately permit them to exercise their right to vote to remove the unpopular IUOE union.

“While this NLRB still has much more to do, the long-awaited new rules represent significant steps towards fully protecting the statutory right of employees under the NLRA to remove a union opposed by a majority of workers,” observed National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “The ‘blocking charge’ policy that is finally being modified has always been particularly odious in its treatment of employee rights, for it allows union allegations against an employer to be grounds for blocking the statutory rights of employees who are not accused of any wrongdoing.”

“Foundation supporters, who deluged the NLRB with demands to safeguard the right of rank-and-file employees to vote, free of coercion, on whether or not union bosses are worthy to speak for them in the workplace, should be proud that their voices helped spur these important reforms,” Semmens added.