Johns Hopkins Ph.D. Student Slams UE Union With Federal Charges for Demanding She Divulge Private Info
Union demanded student be discharged even though nothing in union contract or federal law requires students to give up such info
Baltimore, MD (October 24, 2025) – Andrea Ori, a molecular biophysics Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins, has filed federal charges against United Electrical (UE) union officials at the university. She maintains that UE union bosses demanded her ouster from the academic program because she refused to turn over confidential financial records protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Ori filed her charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and adjudicating disputes between union officials, employers, and employees that arise under the statute. Even though the NLRA doesn’t include graduate students in its definition of “employees,” Obama NLRB appointees ruled in the controversial 2016 Columbia University decision that the NLRA allows union officials to gain monopoly bargaining power over graduate students at private universities, like Johns Hopkins.
Furthermore, Maryland is a state that lacks Right to Work protections, meaning union officials have the government-granted power to force those under their bargaining control to pay union dues or fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job.
At private universities in non-Right to Work states, union bosses can effectively end the graduate programs of students who refuse to pay union dues.
However, graduate students can opt out of dues payment for union political activities by invoking their rights under the Foundation-won Communications Workers of America vs. Beck SCOTUS decision. Federal antidiscrimination law also requires that union officials and university administrators provide religious accommodations for students who oppose union financial support on religious grounds.
Charges: Threatening Student With Termination for Guarding Confidential Financial Info is Illegal “Industrial Capital Punishment” Under Federal Law
Ori, who had successfully obtained a religious accommodation to union dues payment in 2024, now maintains in her charge that UE union officials ordered her for months to turn over pay stubs and other documents that contain private information. Her charges argue that union officials made these demands arbitrarily and in bad faith.
“Nothing in the [union contract], the Charging Party’s religious accommodation, or the NLRA required Charging Party to disclose this private financial information, which was also protected by FERPA,” Ori’s charges say. FERPA generally requires student or parental consent before educational institutions can disclose identifying information to third parties, like unions. Union officials have no right to receive students’ private information.
Even though these demands have no basis, the charges say, UE union bosses are still trying to upend Ori’s academic career. “After months of threatening Charging Party and harassing her to produce these unnecessary and private financial documents containing personal information, the [UE] formally demanded that the University discharge Charging Party,” the charges say. Ori’s attorneys are arguing that the NLRB should consider the union’s wrongful discharge request a form of industrial capital punishment.
“Ms. Ori’s case is just the latest Foundation legal action to show why giving union bosses power over graduate students was never a good idea,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union officials, who are often radical political operatives, have threatened academic freedom from coast-to-coast with their federally-enforced clout over university administrations. But, as Ms. Ori’s case shows, they are also threatening graduate students’ careers by acting as if they have a right to send them packing for not divulging their private information.
“Foundation attorneys stand ready to defend graduate students anywhere from these and other rights violations by union officials,” Mix added. “The obvious conflict between these union boss power grabs over graduate students and students’ statutory privacy rights under FERPA is yet another reminder that Congress never intended for such students to be subjected to monopoly unionism under the National Labor Relations Act.”
Ascension St. Agnes Nurse Slams NNOC Union With Federal Charges After Union Restricts Workplace Vote
Nurse contends that union is discriminating against nonmember nurses and violating duty of fair representation
Baltimore, MD (April 16, 2025) – A nurse at Ascension Health’s St. Agnes Hospital has hit the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) union with federal charges, maintaining that union officials are discriminating against nonmembers as a vote on workplace issues approaches. The nurse, Jen Delaney, filed the unfair labor practice charge at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law and adjudicating disputes between employers, union officials, and individual employees. Delaney details in her charges that NNOC union officials are forbidding nurses who are not formal union members, like herself, from voting on a “partial deal” that is part of a wider contract negotiation. The union is restricting the voting pool despite the fact that the union monopoly contract will impose conditions on all nurses at the facility, members and nonmembers alike.
Delaney is arguing that NNOC union officials are violating the “duty of fair representation,” a legal mandate that requires union officials not to discriminate in its bargaining functions, including on the basis of union membership. The duty originates from a 1944 Supreme Court case, Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co., in which the Court recognized that rail union bosses were manipulating their powers over the workplace to discriminate against African-American railway workers.
Because Maryland lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, NNOC union officials can impose working conditions on the nurses that require them to pay union dues or fees just to keep their jobs. In contrast, in Right to Work jurisdictions like nearby Virginia and West Virginia, union membership and all union financial support are the choice of each individual worker.
“NNOC union officials have been extremely abrasive to any nurse who isn’t gung-ho for the union’s agenda,” commented Delaney. “It wasn’t long ago that my coworkers and I backed an effort to try to vote this union out, and this new development shows exactly why. NNOC union bosses are freezing out nurses from the voting process who are unwilling to sign a membership form that states it is ‘voluntary,’ yet they require signatures to vote, even though that vote is going to have very significant consequences for all of us at St. Agnes.”
Federal Charges Follow Nurses’ Attempt to Vote Union Out
Delaney led an effort to “decertify” (or remove) the NNOC union earlier this year. Delaney and her coworkers reported that union officials made taking care of patients more difficult and that the union generally served as a divisive force in the workplace.
“NNOC union officials are clearly not interested in ‘representing’ all nurses at St. Agnes, and have instead actively discriminated against nurses who are critical of the union’s priorities and who have exercised their legally-protected right to reject formal union membership,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “While this is a violation of the duty of fair representation, it exposes a more fundamental problem with federal labor law: Union officials shouldn’t have the power to foist their ‘representation’ on workers who have disaffiliated with the union to begin with, and certainly shouldn’t have the ability to force those same dissenting workers to subsidize a union they don’t want and never asked for.”
Ascension St. Agnes Hospital Nurses Demand Vote to Remove NNOC/NNU Union Officials
Requested vote would take place in unit of roughly 600 nurses; similar efforts also taking place in New York and New Jersey
Baltimore, MD (November 18, 2024) – Nurses at Ascension St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore are demanding a federal labor board hold a vote to remove National Nurses United (NNU) union officials from their workplace. St. Agnes Nurse Jennifer Delaney submitted a union decertification petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on November 15 on behalf of hundreds of her colleagues. Delaney filed the petition with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, which includes administering elections to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions. Delaney’s decertification petition contains employee signatures well in excess of the threshold needed to trigger a decertification vote under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
According to the petition, Delaney and her coworkers request a vote among all “full-time, regular part-time, and per diem registered nurses” located at Ascension St. Agnes Hospital’s acute care facility in Baltimore. This unit contains approximately 600 nurses.
Because Maryland lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, NNU union officials can enforce contracts that require Delaney and her fellow nurses to pay union dues or fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job. In contrast, in Right to Work states, union membership and all union financial support are strictly voluntary.
A successful decertification vote strips union officials of both their forced-dues power and their ability to impose union monopoly bargaining contracts on every employee in a workplace, even those who oppose the union’s presence.
“This union proved itself to be a divisive force as soon as it began campaigning at our hospital,” commented Delaney. “Many of the nurses opposed its agenda from the very beginning, and a year since it gained power it is still making things difficult for both us and our patients. We are confident that a majority of our coworkers will vote to restore the independence we once had in our workplace.”
Employees in Healthcare and Other Industries Seek to Exit Unions
The St. Agnes Hospital nurses aren’t the only healthcare employees seeking to rid themselves of union monopoly control. In the New York City metro area and Long Island, Foundation staff attorneys are currently assisting nurses at Clara Maass Medical Center and a variety of healthcare workers in the Sun River Health, Inc. system to obtain union decertification elections. If these union removal efforts are successful, over 800 employees will be free from United Healthcare Workers East (1199SEIU) union officials’ forced “association” bargaining powers.
Across all industries, workers are increasingly seeking votes to remove union bosses of whom they disapprove. Despite an over 50% increase in the number of decertification petitions filed annually over the last four years, NLRB bureaucrats recently repealed key reforms (known collectively as the “Election Protection Rule”) that made it easier for workers to request decertification elections.
“Across the country, healthcare workers seem to be discovering that having union bosses in their workplace doesn’t necessarily help them take better care of their patients. We’ve seen many situations where healthcare industry unions needlessly promote union boss priorities ahead of what is best for rank-and-file nurses, or even attempt to force health care providers to abandon their patients during union-instigated strikes,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Unfortunately, union officials often choose to disenfranchise the same workers they claim to ‘represent’ when workers try to exercise their right to vote out a union, a problem made worse by recent Big Labor-backed NLRB rulemaking.
“Regardless, we’ll continue to defend the right of Ms. Delaney, the nurses at St. Agnes Ascension Hospital, and many other healthcare workers across the country to decertify unions they don’t want,” Mix added.
Workers Nationwide Press NLRB to Scrap Policy Blocking Right to Vote Out Unions
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2021 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation cases contend ‘contract bar’ must be eliminated to protect employee freedom
Foundation staff attorneys are assisting Delaware poultry workers in challenging UFCW bosses’ attempts to use the “contract bar” to trap them in union ranks.
WASHINGTON, DC – Foundation attorneys in January filed a Request for Review to the full National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, D.C. The Request defends the right of Virginia Transdev workers to have a vote to remove unpopular Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 2 bosses from power at their workplace.
The Transdev employees, who work at the Fairfax Connector bus service in Northern Virginia, now join Foundation-backed workers in Delaware and Puerto Rico, all of whom are urging the NLRB to eliminate the “contract bar.” That is a non-statutory NLRB policy which forbids employees from exercising their right to vote out an unpopular union in an NLRB-supervised “decertification election” for up to three years after their employer and union finalize a monopoly bargaining contract.
Foundation attorneys point out in each of these cases that the “contract bar” appears nowhere in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law the NLRB is charged with enforcing, and is merely the result of past union boss-friendly decisions by the Board. They also argue that the bar undermines workers’ basic right under the NLRA to remove unions that lack majority support.
“The ‘contract bar’ undermines the fundamental objective of federal labor law: Employee free choice. It makes rank-and-file employees prisoners of an unpopular union, with no way out for up to three years,” commented National Right Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This inevitably creates an environment in which, as these employees can certainly attest, it’s impossible to hold self-serving union bosses accountable because workers are denied the right to vote them out.”
Unpopular OPEIU Bosses Went Behind Workers’ Backs to Sign Contract
The petitioner in the Transdev workers’ case, Amir Daoud, submitted a petition on November 10, 2020, signed by the necessary number of his coworkers to trigger a “decertification election” in his workplace. This was after news had gotten around that an OPEIU union agent had told some employees in October he had “negotiated a new agreement” with Transdev management and “‘intended’ to sign it without a ratification vote.” Workers had already voted down an earlier union boss-promoted monopoly bargaining contract in June.
Foundation attorneys filed a Request for Review, which notes that the union agent didn’t inform Daoud and his coworkers of when he planned to approve the new contract — until after Daoud filed the petition. The new contract was signed by union agents on October 30 and Transdev representatives on October 31.
NLRB Region 5 in Baltimore dismissed Daoud and his coworkers’ decertification petition on December 22, ruling that the “contract bar” applied because the employees’ petition was submitted just after the new contract was signed, even though the employees had no way of knowing whether or when that signing would occur.
This prompted Daoud to ask the NLRB in Washington to review the case. Because Daoud recently accepted a job with Transdev outside the OPEIU’s monopoly bargaining control, the Request for Review asks the NLRB to recognize his coworker Sheila Currie as the new petitioner to represent the interests of the workers who signed the decertification petition.
The Request exposes the arbitrariness of the “contract bar,” pointing out that the NLRB Regional Director applied it “merely because the Union ‘won the race’ and signed the contract ten days” before Daoud submitted the petition, even though the petition clearly demonstrated the employees’ interest in voting the union out.
VA and Puerto Rico Cases Follow Groundbreaking Effort by DE Poultry Workers
The Virginia Transdev employees, and a Puerto Rico armored transit guard who submitted a similar Request for Review on behalf of his coworkers with Foundation aid in January, are now battling the “contract bar” like Delaware Mountaire Farms poultry worker Oscar Cruz Sosa and his coworkers. For almost a year now, Cruz Sosa and his fellow employees have been fighting United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union bosses’ attempts to use the “contract bar” to block their valid petition for a decertification vote. The Mountaire employees are now waiting for the NLRB to issue a ruling on their case.
In that case, UFCW officials claim that the “contract bar” should apply to bar any elections at Mountaire, despite an NLRB Regional Director’s decision allowing the vote because the union contract contains an invalid forced-dues clause.
When the UFCW bosses asked the full NLRB to review the Region’s order allowing the election, Cruz Sosa’s attorneys filed a brief urging that, if the Board granted review, it should use the opportunity to review the entire non-statutory “contract bar” policy. The Board is now doing just that. The UFCW union bosses are even arguing that the impounded ballots already cast by Mountaire workers should be destroyed, claiming the election should never have been held.
The Requests for Review submitted by Foundation staff attorneys for the Puerto Rico guard and Virginia Transdev employees each request that the NLRB should either grant review or least hold the case until a decision is issued in Cruz Sosa’s case.
