Majority of Senior Living center employees want to remove union, but non-statutory ‘successor bar’ traps them under the SEIU

Washington, DC (August 10, 2026) – Edvard Guay, an employee at Sona Senior Living in Deerfield, Illinois, filed an appeal asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to overturn the so-called “successor bar,” which is being used to block him and his colleagues from holding a “decertification” election to remove Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 union bosses from their workplace. The employees’ Request for Review was filed with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

The NLRB’s non-statutory successor bar forces a new owner of a business to recognize and bargain with incumbent union officials for up to a year, regardless of whether that union actually has the support of a majority of rank-and-file workers. This legal tactic prevents employees from exercising their statutory rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to hold elections to remove unwanted unions.

Guay’s request for the NLRB to scrap the successor bar follows the decision of the NLRB Region 13 Director to apply the bar to the Sona Senior Living workers’ case, dismissing their decertification petition to remove SEIU Local 73. A majority of Sona Senior Living employees signed the petition opposing the SEIU’s presence at their workplace.

The Request for Review states that the NLRB should overturn the successor bar because it conflicts with Sections 7 and 9 of the NLRA. Section 7 of the NLRA enshrines workers’ right to refrain from joining a union, and Section 9(c) directs that, when a “question of representation” exists, the Board “shall” conduct an election.

Foundation staff attorneys filed a formal rulemaking petition with the NLRB in June, asking the agency’s Board to overturn its non-statutory “bars,” as the NLRB’s pro-Big Labor policies have no grounds in federal labor law and are designed to disenfranchise workers. Notably, the Board will now have a new Trump-appointed Member, after the Senate confirmed the nomination of James Macy last week.

Last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held—echoing the Foundation’s petition—that the NLRB does not possess the authority under the NLRA to stymie a decertification by invoking the successor bar, with the Court further suggesting that the NLRB’s other non-statutory bars are in violation of the NLRA. The Circuit’s decision was informed by the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court Loper Bright decision, which ended judicial deference to agencies’ interpretations of their statutory authority.

“We look to the new Trump NLRB members to finally bring the agency in line with the text of the law Congress charged them with enforcing, starting by ending the Obama-era ‘successor bar’ ruling that was recently rejected by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This case gives the new Board majority a way to quickly demonstrate that it will prioritize defending workers’ statutory rights, not limiting those rights to protect the power of unwanted union officials.”