Pennsylvania EMT/Rescue Workers File Second Petition for ‘Decertification’ Vote to Remove Teamsters Local 205
At Teamsters’ behest, NLRB official blocked earlier election request citing non-statutory NLRB ‘bar’ to decertification after card check unionization
Huntingdon, PA (October 14, 2025) – Shannon Martin, an employee of North Huntingdon EMS/Rescue, has filed a second petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking a “decertification” election to remove Teamsters Local 205 union officials as the employees’ “representative.” Martin is receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
Martin’s second request comes after the NLRB’s Regional Director for Region 6 in Pittsburgh shot down her first petition. At the behest of Teamsters union lawyers, the Regional Director dismissed the employees’ request for a secret ballot election. That decision cited the agency’s non-statutory “voluntary recognition bar” that prohibits worker-requested secret ballot elections from being held for at least six months and up to one year after a union gains monopoly bargaining power over workers through the abuse-prone “card check” process.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a task that includes administering elections to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions. The Board-created “bar” cited to stifle Martin and her colleagues’ election request is nowhere to be found in the text of the NLRA, but is rather a bureaucratic invention of the agency that is often used by union officials to block workers from having their voices heard.
In the dismissal notice, the NLRB Regional Director stated that “since the petition was filed eight days short of six-months from the parties’ first bargaining session, a voluntary recognition bar exists and I am therefore dismissing the petition.” The premise upon which Martin’s petition was thrown out was that the union demanded and was granted recognition from North Huntingdon EMS/Rescue to be the workers’ monopoly representative without holding a secret ballot NLRB-administered election. Because the parties had been bargaining for less than six months, the Regional Director dismissed the petition, despite the text of the NLRA stating that the Board “shall direct an election” when a question concerning the union’s status as the employees’ representative is raised.
Because Pennsylvania lacks Right to Work protections, Teamsters union bosses are able to impose union monopoly bargaining contracts that force employees to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. Without a decertification election to remove the union, Martin and her colleagues will likely be forced to pay union dues or fees under threat of termination.
The Foundation has seen a rise in the requests for assistance from independent-minded workers seeking support in their efforts to be free of unwanted union bosses. This includes recent cases in Texas and Kentucky where other workers are seeking to remove the Teamsters from their workplace.
“Teamsters union brass, increasingly unable to hold onto their rank and file, are choosing to silence worker voices by not allowing them the chance to have their wishes expressed via secret ballot elections,” stated National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This attempt to use any means to keep workers trapped in a union they oppose and never even voted for demonstrates why the NLRB should move to eliminate the various Board-created hurdles that workers face when attempting to exercise their statutory right to hold decertification elections.”
National Right to Work Foundation Slams Biden-Harris NLRB Rule Overturning Protections on Workers’ Right to Vote in Secret on Unions
New rule will let union officials bypass secret ballot union vote process entirely or delay decertification votes by months or years
Washington, DC (July 30, 2024) – The Biden-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) majority recently announced a 3-1 final rule overturning the protections of the Board’s 2020 Election Protection Rule (EPR). The EPR secures workers’ right to have a secret ballot election on whether to remove a union in their workplace in situations where union bosses use coercive tactics to seize or remain in power.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation submitted comments in 2020 recommending reforms to the NLRB that were later adopted in the EPR. Foundation staff attorneys help workers dissatisfied with union bosses’ “representation” obtain secret ballot votes to “decertify”, or remove, unions in dozens of cases per year.
National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens issued the following statement on the final rule:
“The Biden-Harris NLRB’s grossly misnamed ‘Fair Choice-Employee Voice’ rule expands union boss power by denying actual workers both a choice and a voice. In overturning the common-sense Election Protection Rule, this Board majority has again abandoned its mandate to be a neutral arbiter of federal labor law in order to assist union organizers in trapping workers in forced-dues union ranks against their will.
“Over the past few years, Foundation staff attorneys have often utilized the 2020 reforms to ensure workers could remove unwanted unions that were opposed by a majority of employees. Under the new anti-election rule, many of those employees would still be trapped in union ranks opposed by a majority of their coworkers – something that is directly contrary to the fundamental premise of the National Labor Relations Act that the NLRB is supposed to enforce.
“Despite this setback for the rights of independent-minded employees, we encourage workers to continue to reach out to the Foundation for free legal aid to explore all their legal options for challenging unwanted union bosses at their workplace.”
Biden NLRB’s Destruction of Key Worker Protections Will Trap Workers in Unwanted Unions
Despite comments from multiple groups and individuals backing the EPR and opposing the rule change, including detailed comments from the National Right to Work Foundation, the Biden-Harris NLRB repealed the protections.
The EPR reformed the NLRB process for dealing with union “blocking charges,” which union bosses often file to prevent rank-and-file employees from exercising their right to vote out a union. Union officials manipulate blocking charges to stop workers’ requested votes from taking place for months or even years by making one or multiple allegations against the employer, many of which are baseless.
The 2020 rule stopped union blocking charges from stalling worker-requested votes, and instead let litigation over the election results occur after workers had gotten an opportunity to cast ballots.
The Election Protection Rule also substantially eliminated the so-called “voluntary recognition bar,” a policy that union officials exploited to block workers from requesting a secret-ballot election after a union is installed through the abuse-prone “card check” process. The 2020 NLRB instead adopted a Foundation-backed process in which workers could submit a petition to hold a secret-ballot vote after a union’s installation by card check, with the secret-ballot election determining whether the union actually had the majority support union officials claimed in their submission of “union cards.”
Additionally, the Election Protection Rule cracked down on schemes in the construction industry where employers and union bosses installed a union in a workplace without first providing any proof of majority union support among the workers. Foundation staff attorneys represented a victim of such a scheme in a case (Colorado Fire Sprinkler, Inc.) that ended when a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled for the worker, who had been unionized despite no evidence of majority employee support for the union. As the federal court said, “the rule is that employees pick the union; the union does not pick the employees.”
With the elimination of the Election Protection Rule, workers will not only have a much harder path toward getting a vote on whether a union should be ousted, but even if the vote is held, they will likely be kept in the dark about the results of that vote for months or even years if litigation follows union blocking charges. Also, workers forced into union ranks via card check could be barred for years from ever holding a secret-ballot vote to determine the level of union support, as the 6 to 12-month bar following a card check is often combined with other non-statutory bars like the three-year “contract bar.”
Seattle Housekeeper Wins NLRB Appeal Challenging Double Standard Promoting Coercive ‘Card Check’ Unionization
NLRB General Counsel finds Embassy Suites’ ‘neutrality agreement’ with UNITE HERE violated workers’ rights by illegally assisting union organizing drive
Washington, D.C. (December 3, 2019) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Seattle housekeeper Gladys Bryant has won an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel in her case challenging the use of a “neutrality agreement” between union officials and her employer to impose a union on the hotel’s workers. Her case challenges a legal double standard that allowed union officials to impose union representation in her workplace through a coercive “card check” drive while obtaining assistance from her employer.
Bryant filed the unfair labor practice charges after the UNITE HERE Local 8 union was installed at the Embassy Suites hotel in May 2018 through an oft-abused “card check” drive which bypassed the NLRB’s secret ballot election process. As part of the so-called “neutrality agreement,” Embassy Suites gave union organizers space in the hotel to meet and solicit employees. It also provided union officials with a list of all employees’ names, jobs, and contact information to assist the union in collecting authorization cards from employees.
After NLRB Region 19 officials declined to prosecute the union or employer for violations of the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA), Bryant appealed the case to the NLRB General Counsel in January 2019. In response to the appeal, the General Counsel found that the union’s “card check” recognition was tainted because Embassy Suites through the “neutrality agreement” provided significant aid to the union officials’ organizing efforts in violation of the NLRA.
The NLRB General Counsel agreed with Bryant’s Foundation attorneys that Embassy Suites provided UNITE HERE’s organizing campaign with more than “ministerial aid.” The NLRB has long held that an employer taints employees’ efforts to remove a union if it gives the employees support such as providing a list of bargaining unit employees or use of company resources. Bryant’s appeal successfully argued that the “ministerial aid” standard must also apply when an employer aids union officials’ efforts to gain monopoly bargaining power over workers. Thus, the General Counsel’s ruling applies “ministerial aid” standard consistently, no matter whether the employer’s assistance is in favor of or opposed to unionization.
After the tainted card check drive, Bryant and her coworkers collected enough signatures for a secret-ballot decertification vote to remove the union. However, they were denied that vote when the NLRB blocked their petition based on the “card check” recognition. The block was due to Lamons Gasket, a 2011 Obama NLRB ruling barring decertification for up to one year after unionization via card check. The Board is now accepting comments as to whether it should end or modify that “voluntary recognition bar.”
“It is long past time that the National Labor Relations Board put an end to this double standard that allows union bosses to abuse workers’ rights,” said National Right to Work Foundation Mark Mix. “The General Counsel is correct to finally recognize that what qualifies as more than ‘ministerial assistance and support,’ and thus violates the National Labor Relations Act, cannot depend on whether the employer is helping outside union organizers impose unionization on workers or assisting workers in exercising their right to remove an unwanted union.”
“As this case demonstrates, not only are union bosses willing to manipulate and ignore the rights of the workers they claim they want to ‘represent,’ their coercion has gone unchecked for far too long because of double standards in how the NLRB interprets the law,” Mix added.
