Louisiana Poultry Employee Submits Second Petition Seeking Vote to Oust UFCW Union
Workers’ first petition stalled by non-statutory NLRB ‘contract bar’ protecting unions’ control over workers
Hammond, LA (September 15, 2025) – Coty Hally, an employee of Wayne Sanderson Farms’ Hammond processing facility, has just filed a second petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking a union “decertification” election to remove United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 455 union officials from the workplace. Hally’s earlier petition in June of this year was dismissed by an NLRB Regional Director, which ruled that under its non-statutory “contract bar” policy no employee-requested decertification votes may occur for up to three years after a union contract is imposed. This occurred despite Hally having never seen the contract extension agreement that barred his petition.
Hally’s current petition, filed outside the contract bar’s arbitrary restriction, is supported by over 50% of his facility’s 550-person unit. The unit includes all production and maintenance employees, including truck drivers, at the poultry facility in Hammond, LA. Hally received free legal aid in filing both petitions from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
Concurrent with his two filed petitions, Hally also submitted a Request for Review to the NLRB, arguing that the agency should eliminate the three-year contract bar entirely, as it has no basis in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the NLRA and adjudicating disputes between employers, unions, and individual employees. Under the text of the NLRA, the NLRB can only reject a worker’s petition for an election if another election has already taken place in the past 12 months. Hally’s Request for Review points out that the contract bar is nowhere to be found in the text of the NLRA. It explains that the doctrine was instead made up by unelected NLRB bureaucrats, who overstepped their legal authority by adopting policies that are detrimental to the rights of workers the Board is tasked with defending.
The contract bar has prevented Hally and his coworkers from having an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election for months, protecting union officials from being held accountable by workers that do not recognize them as their “representatives.” The NLRB’s contract bar places undue burdens on workers’ right to free choice.
“A system that necessitates the filing of two separate petitions, signed by a majority of a workplace, seeking to remove one union is not only a broken system, but one that actively works against the best interests of employees,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Big Labor is not content with the special privileges granted to them by the law. Union bosses have also seen to it that they get a protected status from a federal agency that ought to be neutral and uncompromised.
“The NLRB needs to re-establish its impartiality in dealing with the disputes of American workers by doing away with the ‘contract bar’ and other non-statutory ‘bars’ that only serve to protect incumbent union bosses’ power over workplaces where they are opposed by most workers,” Mix added.
Louisiana Poultry Employee Challenges Federal Labor Policy Preventing Coworkers From Voting Out UFCW Union
Worker submitted petition in which over half of his colleagues demanded vote to remove union, but so-called ‘contract bar’ kept union in power
Hammond, LA (July 23, 2025) – Coty Hally, an employee of Wayne Sanderson Farms’ poultry facility in Hammond, LA, is asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, to grant him and his coworkers a chance to vote United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 455 union officials out of their workplace.
Hally is challenging a decision from an NLRB Regional Director that blocked the Wayne Sanderson workers from exercising their right to vote on the basis of the so-called “contract bar,” a non-statutory NLRB policy which immunizes union officials from removal (or “decertification”) efforts for the first three years of a union contract. Hally is receiving free legal aid in his case from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
Hally’s Request for Review argues the NLRB, the federal agency responsible for adjudicating disputes under federal labor law, should eliminate the “contract bar” entirely. “The contract-bar is a Board created limitation on employee statutory rights to seek an election and determine their own representative,” Hally’s Request for Review says. “It is not found in the text of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA]…and it conflicts with the Act’s core purpose.”
“UFCW union officials have been dragging their feet and have not been negotiating good contracts for me and my coworkers,” Hally commented. “This union doesn’t represent us, and it’s ridiculous that the UFCW is manipulating this one dated NLRB policy to keep us trapped in the union, even though most of us have expressed interest in voting the union out. My colleagues and I – not union officials – should be deciding whether the union stays or goes.”
‘Contract Bar’ Policy Absent From Labor Statutes, Burdens Employee Free Choice
Hally’s Request for Review notes that he submitted a petition earlier this month in which over 50% of his 550-person unit demanded a vote to oust the UFCW. Normally NLRB rules only require a 30% “showing of interest” in order to trigger a union decertification vote, but even with this stronger support, “Region 15 dismissed Hally’s petition consistent with the Board’s contract-bar doctrine,” the Request for Review says.
In addition to pointing out that the contract bar policy appears nowhere in the NLRA and was instead the invention of biased NLRB decisions, Hally’s Request for Review contends the policy stifles worker freedom. “This bar contradicts the Act’s well-established ‘bedrock principles of employee free choice and majority rule’…because it grants monopoly bargaining status…even in the face of objective evidence proving the union has lost majority support,” the Request for Review says.
On top of that, NLRB decisions interpreting the “contract bar” rule have only made the rule more burdensome on employees’ free choice rights. A particularly egregious example mentioned in Hally’s Request for Review is the fact that even informal and unpublicized documents exchanged between management and union bosses without workers’ knowledge can be sufficient to trigger the “contract bar” and block employees from exercising their right to decertify.
Hally and his coworkers are not the first group of employees to challenge the contract bar policy with Foundation legal assistance. In 2020 through 2021, Foundation attorneys represented Delaware-based Mountaire Farms poultry employee Oscar Cruz Sosa in defending a vote by his coworkers to remove UFCW union officials. UFCW bosses tried to get the ballots thrown out on a contract bar-related technicality. While the NLRB granted UFCW officials’ outrageous request, Cruz Sosa and his colleagues eventually voted 356-80 to remove the UFCW union once the union contract had expired in their workplace.
“If union bosses are truly doing right by the workers they claim to ‘represent,’ they should have no problem letting workers exercise their right to vote on the union’s control,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Unfortunately, union officials hungry for dues and power still enjoy many legal privileges that let them override workers’ will and rights, not the least of which is the pernicious ‘contract bar.’
“If the Trump Administration’s incoming NLRB members are serious about reversing the dysfunctional policies of the Biden Administration, restoring worker freedom, and defending the rights of workers, they will see the injustice in cases like Mr. Hally’s and Mr. Cruz Sosa’s and move to eliminate the ‘contract bar’ right away,” Mix added.
