DOJ Attorney Battles Biden Admin Union Power Grab Over Justice Department
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation attorneys challenge last minute DOJ unionization in violation of FLRA case law
NTEU union bosses backed Kamala Harris for President, but when voters rejected her, NTEU union officials and the Biden-Harris Administration hastily moved to install the union at the DOJ in an apparent attempt to obstruct Trump’s priorities.
WASHINGTON, DC – In states across the country, union officials go to great lengths to gain more political influence, and will often violate established law to do so.
As veteran Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Morrison is discovering, federal agencies are no exception. Morrison is challenging a last-minute attempt by National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) bosses to gain monopoly bargaining control over attorneys at both the DOJ Civil Rights Division (CRT, where Morrison is employed) and the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD).
The unionization campaign was fast-tracked just days after Trump’s November election victory, in an apparent attempt to formally hand NTEU union officials power over the divisions prior to inauguration day. Morrison’s legal action asks the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to formally review the actions by the Biden DOJ and NTEU officials. The FLRA is the federal agency responsible for adjudicating disputes between federal employees, union officials, and agencies within the federal government.
Brief: DOJ Holdovers and NTEU Bosses Colluded to Flout Existing Law
Morrison, who is receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, contends in filings before the FLRA that the NTEU’s scheme violates an existing FLRA decision in which the agency ruled that CRT attorneys did not comprise a work unit appropriate for unionization.
DOJ management raised this exact concern about the CRT unit with the FLRA after NTEU union bosses began their campaign, but the DOJ dropped its opposition just days after the November federal elections.
Morrison is asking the FLRA to review the decision of the Regional Director to allow the election to go forward in the CRT and ENRD divisions without properly considering if these divisions are an appropriate unit under the law.
Morrison’s filings (called “Applications for Review”) came after DOJ management and NTEU union officials agreed that the CRT and ENRD were work units appropriate for unionization. His Applications for Review point out that a prior FLRA decision, Antitrust Division, held that CRT lawyers “did not have a separate and distinct community of interest from other DOJ trial attorneys” and for that reason couldn’t stand as a distinct bargaining unit.
“[T]he Authority determined this very unit to not be an appropriate unit…The Regional Director’s failure to comply with current, binding Authority precedent is in error and must be reversed,” the Application for Review says regarding the CRT attorneys. This same argument is applied to the ENRD division because it is similarly situated to CRT in the DOJ hierarchy.
FLRA Failed to Conduct Investigation Into NTEU’s Union Scheme
Morrison’s applications also contend that the FLRA “fail[ed] to conduct an independent investigation into the appropriateness of the unit,” despite the law requiring that the FLRA make such a finding.
“An agency agreeing with a union that a unit is appropriate does not mean that unit is actually appropriate. Agencies, like DOJ here, cannot usurp the Authority’s role in deciding unit appropriateness…” say the Applications for Review.
“Right before power changed hands in Washington, DC, NTEU union bosses and DOJ bureaucrats appear to have colluded to flout longstanding precedent that says Justice Department attorneys cannot legally be unionized division by division,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.
“The FLRA has ignored established precedent to let this hasty unionization attempt go through, and our attorneys are proud to assist Mr. Morrison in opposing this maneuver.”
Push to Remove UFCW Union Could End Pro-Union Boss “Contract Bar” Policy
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, September/October 2020 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Non-statutory NLRB policy hinders workers’ right to vote out an unwanted union
Employees at the Selbyville, DE, Mountaire Farms plant rally to vote out unpopular UFCW honchos from their workplace, as union lawyers scramble to block the workers’ votes from being counted.
WASHINGTON, DC – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has announced that it will review the so-called “contract bar” doctrine, which prevents employees from exercising their right to vote an unpopular union out of their workplace for up to three years if union officials and their employer have finalized a monopoly bargaining contract.
This is the latest development in a case by a Selbyville, Delaware-based Mountaire Farms poultry employee, Oscar Cruz Sosa, against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 27 union. Cruz Sosa submitted a petition in February for a vote on whether Local 27 should be removed as monopoly bargaining agent in his workplace. The petition was signed by hundreds of his coworkers, more than the percentage required to trigger such a vote.
Worker Obtains Foundation Help after Union Attempts to Block Vote
After he submitted the petition, UFCW bosses immediately claimed that the “contract bar” should block Cruz Sosa and his coworkers from even having an election, because the monopoly bargaining agreement between Mountaire and the union had been signed less than three years earlier.
Cruz Sosa then obtained free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys in defending his and his coworkers’ right to vote. With Foundation aid, he also hit UFCW agents with federal unfair labor practice charges for imposing an illegal forced-dues clause on the workplace and threatening him after he submitted the petition.
When the NLRB Regional Director in Baltimore heard the election case, he ruled that the union contract contains an unlawful forced-dues clause that mandates workers immediately pay union dues upon hiring or be fired. Under NLRB precedent, an illegal forced-dues clause means the “contract bar” cannot apply, allowing the vote to proceed.
UFCW’s Desperate Attempt to Block Vote Triggers NLRB Review of “Contract Bar”
Despite the longstanding precedent supporting the Regional Director’s ruling, UFCW union lawyers filed a Request for Review, asking the full NLRB to reverse the Regional Director and halt the election.
In response, Cruz Sosa’s Foundation staff attorneys opposed the union’s efforts to block the vote. They also argued that, if the Board were to grant the union’s Request for Review, it should also reconsider the entire “contract bar” policy, which has no statutory basis in the NLRA. The Foundation’s legal brief noted that the “contract bar” runs counter to the rights of workers under the NLRA, which explicitly include the right to vote out a union a majority of workers oppose.
Just hours after the voting process in the decertification election had begun, the NLRB issued its order granting the union’s Request for Review, while also accepting the Foundation’s request to reconsider the entire “contract bar” doctrine. The order noted “that it is appropriate for the Board to undertake in this case a general review of its ‘contract bar’ doctrine.”
Given the precedential import of this case, the NLRB solicited amicus briefs on whether the “contract bar” should be allowed to stand. UFCW officials, still desperate to throw a wrench in Cruz Sosa and his coworkers’ effort to vote them out, demanded that the NLRB rescind its request for amicus briefs in the case, but that effort was quickly rebuffed.
“We urge the NLRB to swiftly overturn this outrageous non-statutory policy, which lets union bosses undermine for up to three years the free choice of workers that is supposed to be at the center of federal labor law,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse. “The very premise of the NLRB-created ‘contract bar,’ that union bosses should be insulated from worker decertification efforts, is completely backwards.”
LaJeunesse added: “Union officials across the country use all types of tactics to get workers into unions but rely on government power and legal tricks to prevent them from getting out.”
