New Jersey Wells Fargo Bank Employees Formally Oust CWA Union Bosses
Branch is the latest in growing movement by Wells Fargo employees endeavoring to end union affiliation
Seaside Park, NJ (April 27, 2026) – Employees at Wells Fargo’s Seaside Park branch have successfully removed Communications Workers of America (CWA) union bosses from their workplace. The effort to remove the union was initiated when bank employee Lisa Sholtis filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking a “decertification” election to remove CWA union officials from the Seaside Park Wells Fargo location. Sholtis filed the petition for her coworkers with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, a task that includes administering elections to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions. Sholtis’ petition was signed by enough of her Wells Fargo coworkers to prompt the NLRB to schedule a union decertification vote.
The workers requested that the NLRB schedule a secret-ballot election among all full-time and regular part-time tellers and personal bankers employed by Wells Fargo at the Seaside Park branch. The workers were looking to vote on whether to remove the so-called “Wells Fargo Workers United” union (an affiliate of the CWA union).
However, shortly before the election was scheduled by the NLRB, CWA union bosses declared that they “disclaim interest” in the Seaside Park Wells Fargo employees. CWA union officials, possibly anticipating an embarrassing election loss, abandoned their status as the workers’ so-called “representatives.”
“After nearly two years with the CWA doing little to nothing for employees at the Seaside Park Branch, we finally have our branch back,” stated Sholtis.
New Jersey is one of the 24 states without Right to Work protections that make union affiliation and dues payment fully voluntary, meaning that Sholtis and her coworkers could have been forced to pay union dues or fees to union officials or else be fired once the employer entered into a union agreement with CWA.
The Seaside Park workers are the latest in a growing movement of Wells Fargo employees across the nation seeking to cast off their CWA “representatives.” Last month, Foundation-assisted Wells Fargo employees in Spring Hill, Florida, and Casper, Wyoming, filed respective petitions to remove the CWA from their branches. More requests for help continue to come in.
In Spring Hill, Florida, CWA union bosses similarly moved to “disclaim interest” in the bank workers, removing themselves as the employees’ monopoly bargaining “representatives,” rather than facing a potentially humiliating decertification vote. In Casper, Wyoming, CWA union officials are seeking to disenfranchise employees by preventing them from even holding the vote. In yet another decertification effort, last month Wells Fargo employees in Apex, North Carolina, overwhelmingly voted to remove CWA union officials from their branch.
“We are pleased to be able to support Ms. Sholtis and her coworkers as they exercise their legal right to remove unwanted CWA union bosses,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “As the movement by Wells Fargo employees to eject the CWA spreads, the Foundation is ready to assist them in exercising their rights under federal law to hold votes to remove the unwanted union.”
Kentucky Construction Industry Workers File Petitions to Oust Teamsters Local 89 Union from their Workplaces
IMI – Irving Materials drivers already free of Teamsters officials’ so-called “representation” while Builders FirstSource workers await vote
Scottsville & Louisville, KY (September 22, 2025) – Chris Smith, an employee of IMI Kentucky in Scottsville, KY, and Kenneth Moore, an employee of Builders FirstSource in Louisville, KY, each filed petitions seeking to end Teamsters Local 89 union officials’ “representation” at their respective workplaces. IMI workers already secured victory in their effort to remove the Teamsters, while the effort to remove the Teamsters at Builders FirstSource is still ongoing.
Both Smith and Moore filed their petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys. The NLRB is the federal agency tasked with enforcing federal labor law and with adjudicating disputes between employers, unions, and individual workers. Workers are able to initiate an election administered by the NLRB if their petition gathers the signatures of 30% or more of their fellow employees.
Smith and Moore’s respective petitions garnered the necessary signatures from their coworkers to trigger an NLRB-administered secret ballot election to vote on the Local 89’s continued control. After employees demonstrate sufficient support for a decertification, in most cases the NLRB will schedule a secret ballot election. That process is ongoing for the employees of Builders FirstSource in Louisville.
However, in Smith’s case the employee support for removing the union was so overwhelming that Teamsters union bosses decided to save themselves the humiliation of being formally voted out, and instead disclaimed their status as the workers’ “exclusive representative” the very same day Smith’s petition was filed. The next day the NLRB Regional Director certified that the employees are officially free of Teamsters Local 89.
The employees at IMI Kentucky and Builders FirstSource join a long list of workers who have recently banded together to remove the Teamsters from their workplaces. In fact, NLRB statistics for the past 12 months show that over 20% of all decertification cases involved the Teamsters union.
“More and more, American workers across the country are deciding they are better off without Teamsters union bosses who prioritize their own interests over that of the workers they claim to ‘represent,’” stated National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “As Teamsters bosses attempt to cozy up to those in the halls of power, elected officials should remember that despite the claims of dishonest union bosses, union officials do not speak for the workers under their so-called ‘representation,’ many of whom would like to remove the Teamsters if given the choice. In fact, statistics show that over 90% of employees have never had a vote on the union that purports to represent them.
“That one in five decertification petitions filed last year involved the Teamsters only drives home the point that workers are increasingly rejecting union bosses’ coercive agenda,” added Mix.
New Jersey Energy Workers Win Bid to Remove Unwanted Union
So-called ‘SMART’ Local 137 union officials disclaim representation rather than face a decertification vote of rank-and-file workers
Fairlawn, NJ (March 23, 2023) – Calmac Corp employee Carlos Flores and his coworkers have won their effort to free themselves of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation (“SMART”) Local 137 union. The worker’s decertification effort recently became official when the SMART Local 137 union officials preemptively “disclaimed” interest in representing the Calmac Corp workers, rather than face a vote on whether to remove the union.
Flores, during the course of the decertification effort, received free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys. The decertification petition, filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), included the signatures of a significant portion of his coworkers.
The Calmac Corp employee petition was filed on March 7, 2023. The petition was quickly followed by a letter from union officials, disclaiming interest in “representing” Calmac Corp workers. Luckily for the Calmac workers, the entire decertification process was completed rather quickly. However, this is not always the case for many workers around the nation who are also working to remove overbearing unions.
For example, the NLRB’s union decertification process is prone to union boss-created roadblocks. That includes “blocking charges”, or charges union officials levy against employers in an attempt to postpone or de-legitimize decertification efforts. These charges often have little to no basis and are used specifically to delay decertification petitions.
Foundation-backed reforms the NLRB adopted in 2020 made it somewhat easier for workers to remove unwanted union officials, and made it harder for unions to file blocking charges. However, the Biden NLRB is attempting to roll back these protections and make it much more difficult to decertify a union.
Worker interest in removing unwanted unions is growing nationwide, with National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys fielding numerous requests for free legal assistance in decertification cases, with Flores and his coworkers just being one of these cases.
The NLRB’s own data show that, currently, a unionized private sector worker is more than twice as likely to be involved in a decertification effort as a nonunion worker is to be involved in a unionization campaign.
“While we are extremely satisfied Calmac Corp workers were able to exercise their right to be union-free, had the 2020 Foundation-backed reforms to the NLRB not been in place this could have been a different story with union officials dragging out the process even though they clearly knew any vote would go against the union,” observed Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation.
“Should the Biden-appointed NLRB Members be successful in their goal to roll back these reforms, workers like those at Calmac Corp could face enormous hurdles in their decertification efforts and be trapped within union ranks for months or even years,” Mix continued.
