Workers Nationwide Urge Trump NLRB to End Policies Trapping Them Under Union Power
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, May/June 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
NLRB-invented policies currently allow union bosses to block worker-requested votes
Theresa Hause, an Oregon-based school bus driver, wants the Trump NLRB to end the so-called “merger doctrine” that grants union officials the power to combine workplaces into giant, inescapable mega-units.
WASHINGTON, DC – During the Biden Administration, biased, pro-Big Labor National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) bureaucrats went out of their way to undermine the idea that workers and workers alone should choose whether or not they want a union. Rolling back multiple National Right to Work Foundation-backed reforms that made it easier for workers to vote out unions they didn’t want was a prime example of this.
But the Biden NLRB’s extremism is only the latest example of how federal labor law is biased against workers opposed to union affiliation. The truth is that biased bureaucrats on the NLRB have, for decades, burdened independent-minded workers with arbitrary barriers to freeing themselves from union influence. Many of these policies — which are the inventions of NLRB decisions and appear nowhere in the National Labor Relations Act’s (NLRA) text — let union bosses block workers from exercising their statutory right to vote to remove a union.
Bus Drivers Fight Forced Dues in Huge, Inescapable Teamsters Unit
The Trump Administration taking control of the NLRB in Washington, D.C., has presented workers around the country who want to escape union influence with a new opportunity to attack these restrictions. Foundation attorneys are already helping workers lead the charge for reform to create precedents that will allow others to remove unions opposed by most workers.
Last December, Theresa Hause, a Washington State-based school bus driver, submitted to the NLRB a deauthorization petition which contained employee support well over the necessary threshold needed to trigger a vote to strip Teamsters Local 58 bosses of their forced-dues power in Hause’s workplace. Hause and her fellow drivers are employed by First Student, Inc.
She was surprised to learn during NLRB proceedings that First Student management and Teamsters union officials had covertly signed an agreement “merging” Hause’s small unit of workers into a much larger national unit, composed of thousands of Teamsters-controlled bus drivers across the country.
Because of the NLRB’s so-called “merger doctrine” policy, Hause and her colleagues are now in this “mega-unit,” and any petition to end the union’s forced-dues power (or remove the union completely) needs to contain signatures from at least 30% of the “mega-unit” — thousands of people Hause has never met — to be considered valid. The NLRB official that dismissed Hause’s petition even ruled that the fact employees were kept in the dark about this merger was irrelevant, outrageously saying “there is nothing in the merger doctrine that requires acquiescence or even notification of employees of a change in a bargaining unit.”
Hause’s Foundation-provided attorneys are challenging the merger doctrine in an appeal of Hause’s case to the NLRB in D.C., arguing among other things that the policy violates employee free choice and that it serves as a protection racket for established unions.
While Hause and her colleagues are fighting for a vote to free themselves from forced dues, attacking the merger doctrine also has significant ramifications for workers seeking to decertify a union. Foundation attorneys have represented many workers who have been shanghaied into huge, inescapable work units against their will. That includes a group of less than 10 Wisconsin First Student workers who filed a majority-backed petition to remove Teamsters officials as soon as allowed by federal law, only to be stymied by the merger doctrine because they had been secretly “merged” into a multi-company unit of around 24,000 workers in multiple states.
WV Homecare Workers Not ‘Settling’ for ‘Settlement Bar’
Meanwhile, in West Virginia, a Foundation-assisted employee of senior homecare nonprofit McDowell County Commission on Aging is attacking the NLRB’s use of another union boss-friendly policy to block his and his coworkers’ effort to kick out Service Employees International Union (SEIU) bosses: the so-called “settlement bar,” which lets unions and employers unilaterally agree in settlements to end employee-led union decertification efforts.
The employee, John Reeves, and his coworkers cast ballots in a July 2024 vote to remove SEIU union officials, but are now battling claims that a settlement SEIU bosses and Commission management signed should relegate those ballots to the trash bin. The SEIU and Commission entered into the settlement to end the decertification and resolve unfair labor practice allegations union agents had filed against the employer. That supposed employer wrongdoing was cited as the impetus for Reeves and his coworkers’ desire to remove the union — even though it was never admitted to by the employer nor proven by union lawyers.
Instead of letting Reeves show why the union’s accusations didn’t cause his employees’ disenchantment with the union, regional NLRB officials instead invoked the settlement bar and dismissed the decertification effort, based on the phony “resolution” of speculative charges by the union. Reeves is asking the NLRB in Washington, D.C., to review his case.
Reform Needed to Undo Coercive Policy
“Ms. Hause’s and Mr. Reeves’ cases provide just a sampling of the grand buffet of privileges the NLRB has granted union bosses over the years,” observed National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “Union bosses and complicit employers should not be able to cut workers off from exercising their basic right to remove unpopular union bosses, yet that’s exactly what both the ‘merger doctrine’ and ‘settlement bar’ allow.
“If members of the Trump NLRB are dedicated to defending the rights of all American workers, they will focus not only on countering the extensive damage done to individual worker rights by the Biden Labor Board, but also on digging deeper to undo the web of non-statutory coercive union boss powers that has been created over decades,” Semmens added.
Full Foundation Action March/April Newsletter Now Online
All articles from the March/April 2025 issue of Foundation Action are now online.
In this issue:
- Following Foundation Legal Arguments, Trump Fires Biden-Appointed NLRB Bureaucrats
- Hundreds of OH Workers Exit Teamsters as Union Bosses’ Amazon ‘Strike’ Stunt Flounders
- DOJ Attorney Battles Biden Admin Union Power Grab Over Justice Department
- St. Louis-Area Worker Battles Illegal Union Threats to Get Non-Members Fired
- More Minnesota Nurses Send MNA Union Bosses Packing
- Vanderbilt Grad Students Free From Aggressive UAW Campaign
Recent articles can be found here. To sign up for a free copy of the newsletter via mail please see the form at the bottom of the page.
Vanderbilt Grad Students Free From Aggressive UAW Campaign
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation-assisted students challenged union-backed NLRB demand for private info
Notorious UAW President Shawn Fain saw his union rebuffed by many Vanderbilt students concerned about the union’s intrusive organizing methods. Facing legal and political headwinds, UAW bosses dropped their campaign.
NASHVILLE, TN – Union monopoly bargaining creates barriers to freedom for people across the country. It requires workers to accept self-motivated union bosses as their sole “voice” on issues in their workplace. But, in the private sector, it’s unfortunately the law of the land.
That’s not as clear when it comes to colleges and universities. Although the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under President Obama upended existing precedent to dubiously let union officials impose monopoly arrangements on graduate students — a ruling continued by the Biden NLRB — the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) generally bans universities from sharing student information without student permission. This puts FERPA and federal labor law at odds, as such information is something employers are required by the NLRB to produce during a unionization campaign.
After the United Auto Workers (UAW) union launched a campaign in late 2024 to sweep Vanderbilt University’s graduate students under their monopoly power, NLRB officials required the college to fork over the info of thousands of students. But three courageous students stood up with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, arguing that disclosure without any procedure violated their privacy rights under FERPA.
Now, union officials have backed down and withdrawn the entire union campaign at the college. The three students and others are free from being forced into UAW union monopoly ranks and from the disclosure of their FERPA-protected information.
“The withdrawal of UAW organizers’ petition seeking a vote to unionize us against our will is a welcome victory for us in our defense of our rights and the rights of our fellow graduate students,” commented one of the Foundation-assisted Vanderbilt graduate students, identified as Jane Doe 1 in legal filings to protect her identity.
Students: FERPA Lets Us Protect Private Info From Unionization Scheme
The students’ effort to protect their privacy began in October 2024, when two students identified in filings as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 moved to intervene in the NLRB case. They argued that FERPA’s language permits students to seek “protective action” if a university receives a subpoena seeking their personal information, as Vanderbilt had from the NLRB. A regional NLRB official denied their motion to intervene. Foundation attorneys submitted an emergency appeal for John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 to the NLRB in Washington, DC, emphasizing that the students needed an opportunity to “address the serious privacy issues raised by the Region’s subpoena.”
Foundation attorneys additionally filed an updated motion to intervene that included Jane Doe 1 as another student seeking to intervene in the case. Several other graduate students also submitted less-formal objections urging the agency not to enforce a subpoena divulging their private information. The District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee issued a ruling on November 22, 2024, temporarily releasing Vanderbilt from its obligation to comply with the NLRB subpoenas. A few weeks later, UAW union officials announced they were withdrawing their petition to unionize Vanderbilt graduate students, meaning the subpoenas seeking student information are effectively null and void.
Foundation Fights Union Malfeasance at Colleges Nationwide
Meanwhile, Foundation attorneys are assisting graduate students at Dartmouth and MIT with fighting attempts by United Electrical (UE)- affiliated unions to demand dues payments from students against their will and in violation of their rights. Kara Rzasa, a Dartmouth graduate student, and Michael Fernandez, an MIT graduate student, have each hit UE local and national affiliates with charges for illegal polices UE officials are utilizing nationwide when demanding forced dues payments.
“While we’re happy that the private information of Vanderbilt grad students is now secure, it’s clearer than ever that the biased NLRB decisions granting union bosses the ability to foist union monopolies over graduate students were wrong,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “In Foundation cases, we’ve seen union bosses put students’ academic freedom, religious freedom, and privacy protections all at risk, which is why the new appointees to the NLRB need to clarify that students are off-limits to union monopoly power schemes.”
More Minnesota Nurses Send MNA Union Bosses Packing
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Politics-motivated union faces string of successful decertification votes in Minnesota
Brittany Burgess (front, center) and her coworkers at Mayo Clinic’s Mankato, Minnesota, branch sparked a wave of Foundation-backed efforts across Minnesota to declare independence from union bosses, with the most recent success in Fairmont, Minnesota.
FAIRMONT, MN – In 2022, then-President of the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) union Mary Turner expressed to the Minnesota Reformer her ambition to continue pushing the MNA’s political agenda in the Minnesota state legislature and eventually vie for the presidency of the National Nurses United (NNU) union, MNA’s parent.
The NNU is also known for its ardent political activity — in 2016, the union’s super PAC spent roughly $1 million on promoting self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders for president.
When asked whether the union’s politics played a role in the fact hundreds of nurses, backed by the National Right to Work Foundation, had just voted MNA union bosses out of power at Mayo Clinic in Mankato, Minnesota, Turner had this to say: “They’re going to have to prove to us that they want the union because they lost it.”
Fast-forward to 2025, and the MNA’s obsession with politics hasn’t changed — and neither has nurses’ opposition to the alienating nature of the union. This January, with free Foundation legal aid, nurses at Mayo Clinic’s Fairmont, Minnesota, location voted by over 60% to remove MNA union officials from their facility.
“The MNA was a very divisive force in our workplace, and I think we’ll be able to better serve our patients and the community without the union,” commented nurse Jamie Campbell on the vote.
Foundation Backs Another Grassroots Effort to Nix MNA
Campbell kick-started the union removal effort by submitting a petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in December 2024 requesting a union decertification vote.
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. Campbell’s union decertification petition contained well over the number of employee signatures needed to trigger a decertification vote under NLRB rules.
Because Minnesota lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, MNA union officials had the legal power to require all the Fairmont Mayo nurses to pay at least a portion of union dues as a condition of keeping their jobs. In contrast, in Right to Work jurisdictions, union membership and all union financial support are voluntary and the choice of each individual worker.
However, in both Right to Work and non-Right to Work states, union officials are able to impose one-size-fits-all contracts on all employees in a work unit, even those who voted against or otherwise oppose the union.
Fairmont Victory Follows Others in Mankato, St. James
The election took place in January, and within a week, the NLRB certified the nurses’ successful ouster of the union.
Since 2022, several sizable units of healthcare workers in Minnesota have sought out Foundation legal aid to obtain removal votes against the MNA and other unions, and have often been successful in freeing themselves. After Mankato Mayo Clinic nurses voted MNA out, nurses at Mayo’s St. James branch did the same with AFSCME Council 65 in August 2022. Support staff at the Mankato facility kicked out American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1856 union officials in 2023.
“MNA union bosses’ influence and political connections did not shield them from suffering another defeat by rank-and-file nurses at the ballot box,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens.
“Ironically, Minnesota’s lack of Right to Work protections — which are vociferously opposed by the MNA — likely removed an important accountability tool from the relationship between the MNA and the nurses they claim to ‘represent.’ It’s no surprise that union bosses who can force workers to pay union dues or fees on pain of termination wind up being far less effective and more out-of-touch than union officials who must earn the voluntary financial support of each worker.”
St. Louis-Area Worker Battles Illegal Union Threats to Get Non-Members Fired
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
After divisive strike, IAM bosses demand non-members pay illegal ‘reinstatement fee’ to work
Robert Jacobs, an employee of power management company Eaton, filed federal charges showing IAM bosses clearly can’t manage their power: They are threatening union non-members with hundreds in illegal fees.
TROY, IL – “They’re threatening our jobs and livelihoods.”
This is how Robert Jacobs, an employee for power management company Eaton Corporation, described how International Association of Machinists (IAM) union bosses were treating him and his colleagues who dissented from the union’s agenda in an interview with the St. Louis Business Journal.
IAM officials ordered hundreds of Eaton employees at its St. Louis-area facility to strike in October 2024, which alienated many workers and made them question union bosses’ motives. Jacobs described seeing union agents take photos of his license plate during the strike and how he suspected union agents were following him home.
IAM Anti-Worker Activity Only Increased After Disruptive Strike Order
But for Jacobs and other workers, that was only the beginning of IAM’s coercive conduct. After the strike concluded, many Eaton employees chose to exercise their right to resign their union memberships. Even in states like Illinois that lack Right to Work protections, private sector workers are free to end their union memberships, even if union officials enforce a contract that requires non-members to pay some fees as a condition of employment.
Instead of respecting this right, IAM union officials began retaliating against those who wanted to cut ties with the union. With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Jacobs slammed the IAM with federal charges for threatening to get him and other employees who resigned union membership fired unless they pay hundreds in “reinstatement fees” concocted by the union. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is now reviewing his charges.
“I and several of my colleagues don’t want to be part of the IAM union, but we are required by law to pay fees to union bosses just to keep our jobs,” commented Jacobs.
“That’s already something that we don’t want to do. But IAM officials are going even further and hitting us with hundreds of dollars in made-up fees just because we exercised our right to not be union members.”
IL Worker: Mandatory ‘Reinstatement Fee’ Not Permitted by Federal Law
Under federal labor law, which the NLRB is charged with enforcing, private sector employees have an absolute right to resign union membership. This right is codified in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and was affirmed by landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as General Motors v. NLRB.
Federal law further spells out that neither employers nor union officials can compel private sector workers to participate in union activities or refrain from such activities.
According to Jacobs’ federal charge, which was filed on the last day of 2024, “the Union is presently threatening Charging Party and [other employees who resigned from the union] with termination if they fail to pay a $306 ‘reinstatement fee’ by January 2025.” The charge argues that the IAM union is violating Eaton employees’ rights under Section 7 of the NLRA, which safeguards employees’ “right to refrain from any or all of ” union activities.
According to the Business Journal, IAM officials’ letter demanding this payment was what prompted him to contact Foundation attorneys. “[I]f you do not remit the total sum indicated in the enclosed letter within 30 days from receipt of this letter, the Union will be required to seek your termination from employment,” the letter read.
“Instead of seeking to win Eaton employees’ voluntary support, IAM union officials have decided to effectively extort the workers they claim to ‘represent,’” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “Threatening to terminate workers if they don’t pay a fee which is apparently intended to punish those who don’t want union bosses speaking for them tarnishes employee rights and freedom.
“While we’re confident that Foundation attorneys will help Mr. Jacobs prevail in beating this illegal scheme, this case shows what self-interested union bosses will do to demand fealty from workers, and why all American workers deserve the Right to Work freedom to cut off financial support for such union hierarchies,” Messenger added
Hundreds of OH Workers Exit Teamsters as Union Bosses’ Amazon ‘Strike’ Stunt Flounders
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Teamsters O’Brien tried to take away Christmas cheer, but couldn’t take away Ohio workers’ freedom
Daniel Caughhorn led a scrappy group of his coworkers in voting Teamsters bosses out of their workplace, a scrap metal processing facility in Toledo, OH. They also beat back union bosses’ attempts to overturn their vote.
WASHINGTON, DC – This past December, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien announced the “largest-ever strike against Amazon,” claiming that thousands of workers would heed his strike order, abandon their delivery vehicles and hit the picket lines. O’Brien threatened that Christmas gifts would be delayed unless his demands were met.
Those who took O’Brien’s rhetoric at face value would have thought he was a veritable Grinch stealing Christmas (even though he tried to explain it was Amazon’s fault that the strike had to occur). But even reporting from pro-Big Labor outlets soon revealed that the order was more story than substance: According to Labor Notes, only about 600 employees obeyed the strike order despite Teamsters honchos claiming to “represent” some 7,000 to 10,000 Amazon employees.
Even the small number who did cease work on O’Brien’s command are arguably not employees of Amazon, and likely aren’t under Teamsters control at all: They work primarily for independent contractors that carry out some delivery functions for Amazon. Even if O’Brien’s dubious theory claiming he had control over those delivery drivers was correct, it would have only affected 10 out of the roughly 110 Amazon centers nationwide. Still, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys put a special legal notice out to delivery drivers nationwide informing them of their rights if they were illegally coerced to strike.
Workers Defeat Cynical Attempt by Teamsters to Overturn Vote
The December 2024 Teamsters “strike” against Amazon may go down in history as a strained publicity stunt. But the more significant Teamsters news that month was that hundreds of Foundation-backed workers across Northern Ohio took real action by voting to free themselves from unwanted Teamsters officials’ so-called “representation.”
Dusty Hinkle, an employee for Frito-Lay’s plant in Wooster, OH, and Daniel Caughhorn, a worker at scrap metal firm Omnisource’s facility in Toledo, OH, paved the way to freedom for their coworkers by submitting petitions asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold votes among their coworkers to remove or “decertify” Teamsters unions at their facilities. They submitted these in October and August 2024, respectively, with free Foundation legal assistance.
Because Ohio lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, Teamsters officials enforced contracts that required Hinkle, Caughhorn, and their colleagues to pay union dues or fees as a condition of keeping their jobs. In contrast, in Right to Work states, union membership and all union financial support are strictly voluntary.
The NLRB, the federal agency that enforces federal labor law, administered decertification votes at Hinkle’s and Caughhorn’s workplaces after finding that both petitions contained enough employee signatures to trigger a vote under agency rules. Even though clear majorities of workers voted against Teamsters union control in both votes, Teamsters union officials filed objections alleging misconduct by Frito-Lay and Omnisource management in an attempt to overturn the election results.
However, in both cases regional NLRB officials tossed the union objections and certified the workers’ votes. The Omnisource and Frito-Lay employees — over 430 in total — thereby cut all ties with the Teamsters unions. Now both sets of employees are free both of union bosses’ forced-dues demands and their ability to impose one-size-fits-all contracts on the workplace.
In the final months of 2024, Foundation attorneys assisted a number of other workers from across industries with efforts to remove unwanted Teamsters officials. From just October to December 2024, truck drivers from Georgia, California, Virginia, and New Jersey successfully booted out Teamsters union officials or initiated removal efforts with Foundation aid. These cases came despite increasingly hostile rulemaking from the outgoing Biden Administration’s NLRB bureaucrats in 2024, which undid key Foundation-backed reforms that made it easier for workers to request decertification elections.
Teamsters Schemes to Steal Christmas and Workers’ Rights Both Failed
“Sean O’Brien’s Christmas publicity stunt might have made him seem like an attempted stealer of gifts and holiday cheer, but these two Foundation cases from Ohio demonstrate what Teamsters bosses really are: stealers of workers’ rights and freedom,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens.
“That Teamsters officials in both these cases attempted to disenfranchise workers who opposed them shows why workers are turning against their power-hungry tactics, and why American workers deserve the Right to Work choice to withhold financial support from union officials who aren’t serving their interests.”
Austin Worker Files 5th Foundation-Backed Lawsuit Arguing NLRB Violates US Constitution
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, January/February 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Case joins others for employees nationwide arguing Labor Board’s structure is illegal
Dallas Mudd helps connect people with the social services they need, and his and many other workers’ ability to do their important work shouldn’t be stymied because unaccountable NLRB bureaucrats are forcing union “representation” on them.
AUSTIN, TX – In November, Dallas Mudd, an employee for online social service coordination platform Findhelp, filed a federal lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on the grounds that the agency’s structure is unconstitutional. Mudd’s case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is the latest in a series of legal actions by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys for employees challenging the NLRB’s authority.
Mudd’s case comes after he filed a decertification petition with the NLRB, seeking a vote to remove the Office & Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) from his workplace. However, NLRB officials blocked the vote, disenfranchising Mudd and his colleagues on the basis of unproven charges union bosses made against Findhelp. Mudd appealed the decision to the full NLRB in Washington, D.C., while also filing a federal lawsuit to challenge NLRB members’ removal protections.
Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Mudd’s Foundation attorney also asked the Northern District Court of Texas to issue a preliminary injunction stopping the NLRB from adjudicating his appeal until the issue of the NLRB’s constitutionality is resolved. Mudd argues that he is suffering ongoing and irreparable harm by being forced to navigate a statutory process before an agency that he claims is unconstitutionally structured.
Constitutional Challenge: A Broader Legal Campaign
Meanwhile, in its own case against the NLRB, Findhelp has successfully secured an injunction against the NLRB in a federal district court making arguments similar to those raised by Mudd.
Mudd’s lawsuit follows four other constitutional challenges backed by the National Right to Work Foundation, targeting the NLRB’s structure. This includes a case for New York Starbucks employees Ariana Cortes and Logan Karam, who filed the first constitutional challenge to NLRB Board Member protections.
Their case is currently being briefed at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but since their groundbreaking lawsuit, numerous major employers have utilized the arguments first made in federal court by Foundation staff attorneys to challenge the radically pro-union boss BidenHarris NLRB.
“Independent-minded workers should not be forced to depend on biased agencies staffed by bureaucrats who exercise power in violation of the Constitution,” said National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens.
“The Constitution does not permit a powerful federal agency to operate as the judge, jury, and executioner without proper oversight.
“Contrary to the wishes of Big Labor bosses, federal labor law is not exempt from the requirements of the U.S. Constitution,” added Semmens.
Dartmouth, MIT, Vanderbilt Graduate Students Challenge Forced Unionism
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, January/February 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation-backed students defend rights as union bosses seek more power at universities
Ben Logsdon is a Ph.D. student in mathematics at Dartmouth College. But it doesn’t take a genius to realize that union officials’ refusals to accommodate his religious objections just don’t add up.
HANOVER, NH – Just weeks after National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys triumphed in anti-discrimination cases for Jewish Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate students who sought to stop forced dues payments to a radically anti-Israel union, union officials began creating other problems for university students.
In nearby New Hampshire, Dartmouth graduate student Benjamin Logsdon sought free Foundation legal aid against Graduate Organized Laborers of Dartmouth (GOLD-UE) union officials. The GOLD union — which is an affiliate of the same United Electrical (UE) union involved in the Foundation’s MIT cases — is forcing Logsdon to accept the union’s monopoly “representation” powers against his will, even after he voiced his religious objections to the union’s radical stances on the conflict against Israel.
Grad Students Exposed to Union Coercion & Privacy Violations
Meanwhile, several graduate students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, are pushing back against an attempt by Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United (VGWU, an affiliate of United Auto Workers) union bosses to impose union control over them and their colleagues. Specifically, three students are seeking to intervene in a federal case in which VGWU union officials are illegally demanding the university hand over the students’ private information to aid in their unionization campaign. Foundation staff attorneys filed motions for intervention for these students in October 2024.
Foundation attorneys are arguing that union officials severely violate students’ rights in both of these cases. However, the reason that union officials are in power on college campuses at all traces back to flawed rulings from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under both the Obama Administration and Biden Administration. These rulings subject graduate students to pro-Big Labor provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which create issues for students’ freedom both inside and outside the classroom.
Logsdon, a Christian Ph.D. student in mathematics at Dartmouth, slammed the GOLD union with federal anti-discrimination charges in September 2024 at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). According to those charges, shortly after the GOLD union finalized its first monopoly bargaining contract with the Dartmouth administration, he sent a letter to United Electrical General Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker explaining that he objected to being affiliated with GOLD on religious grounds and needed an accommodation.
“I sought to be removed from the UE and GOLD-UE bargaining unit as a reasonable accommodation,” Logsdon’s Foundation-backed charges say.
Dinkelaker refused to offer Logsdon an accommodation that “satisf[ied] [his] religious conscience or beliefs,” according to the charges, which violated his rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Courts have recognized a variety of Title VII religious accommodations over the years for men and women who have religious objections to union affiliation, including paying an amount equivalent to union dues to a charity instead of union bosses. However, Logsdon seeks a different accommodation: to remove himself from union bosses’ control entirely.
At Vanderbilt, three students who identify themselves in legal documents as “John Doe 1,” “John Doe 2,” and “Jane Doe 1” are contending in their Foundation-backed motions for intervention that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) forbids the Vanderbilt administration from disclosing their personal information to any third parties without their permission, including the VGWU union.
At the union’s behest, NLRB Region 10 has already hit the Vanderbilt administration with a pair of subpoenas demanding personal student info, while ignoring objections from several students expressing concern at the disclosure.
So far Vanderbilt has resisted the NLRB’s subpoenas, and fortunately a federal court has temporarily allowed the university to refuse to comply with them.
The Foundation-backed students’ motions to intervene argue that the subpoenas “are an attempt to violate FERPA’s protections, privileging union interests over the graduate students[’] privacy rights.” It also points out that FERPA allows students to seek “protective action” if a university receives a subpoena seeking their personal information, as in this case.
The Vanderbilt students and their Foundation attorneys are demanding an opportunity to properly defend their privacy interests under FERPA. Foundation attorneys have already filed Requests for Review asking the NLRB in Washington, DC, to weigh in on the matter.
Union Monopoly Power Has No Place at Universities
“Graduate students around the country are discovering that union bosses don’t respect their individual rights and would rather use students as pawns to force their demands on a university administration, or advance an extreme political agenda,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger.
“Union monopoly bargaining is a system particularly ill-suited to an academic environment. Indeed, it is wrong for anyone to have a union monopoly imposed on them against their will and then be forced to pay union dues under threat of termination.”
AT&T Workers Nationwide Win Challenges to Unionization Imposed Through Card Check
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, November/December 2024 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Victories by AT&T workers in five states preceded Biden-Harris NLRB rule change to block secret ballot votes
See You, CWA: Marquita Jones (left), Samantha Cain (middle), and Matthew Gonzalez rallied their fellow AT&T workers to escape unwanted CWA unions.
WASHINGTON, DC – While the Biden-Harris National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sought to upend NLRB rules designed to protect workers’ ability to vote out unwanted unions, AT&T workers across the country won a series of victories highlighting the importance of allowing workers to challenge coercive union card check unionization with secret ballot votes. The decertification victories all relied on the National Right to Work Foundation-backed 2020 NLRB “Election Protection Rule” (EPR), which was formally eliminated by the Biden-Harris Labor Board in September.
In five separate cases covering well over 1,000 workers, AT&T Mobility employees have successfully overturned Communications Workers of America (CWA) unionization imposed through the notorious “card check” process.
Under card check, union organizers bypass the secret ballot election process and instead collect cards face-to-face from employees that are then counted as “votes” for the union. Without the privacy of a secret ballot vote, many workers report being pressured, bullied, or threatened into signing, which is among the reasons why card check has long been recognized as inherently unreliable and abuse-prone.
Foundation-Backed 2020 Rule Let Over 1,000 AT&T Workers Nix Union Card Checks
The 2020 Election Protection Rule reformed several rules that union officials manipulate to trap workers under monopoly “representation,” including by giving employees a way to challenge card check unionization with a secret ballot election. Foundation staff attorneys assisted AT&T employees in five states to do that in advance of the Biden-Harris Labor Board’s cynical repeal of the rule.
First, in Tennessee, AT&T employee Denis Hodzic filed a petition signed by two-thirds of his coworkers in the unit seeking a secret-ballot vote to remove the CWA union, after CWA agents installed themselves over 100 AT&T In-Home Experts by card check. Initially CWA union officials argued the election should be permanently blocked because the union had already merged the workers into a larger bargaining unit with thousands of other AT&T workers.
CWA Bosses Capitulated to AT&T Workers
However, citing the Election Protection Rule, which gives workers at least 45 days to challenge a card check with a decertification petition, Foundation staff attorneys were able to win a ruling with the NLRB allowing the vote to proceed. At that point CWA officials chose not to even contest the vote, instead filing paperwork with the NLRB freeing the employees from CWA ranks apparently to avoid an overwhelming final vote against the union.
“The Election Protection Rule was essential for us to rely on as we went through the process of seeking resolution to our tricky situation,” Hodzic said of his situation. “The 45-day petition window needs to remain regardless of which group holds the majority position in Washington.”
Since then, with legal aid, around 1,000 additional AT&T Mobility employees in California, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas have all also successfully removed the CWA union following installation through card check. In all four states, once the decertification vote became inevitable, CWA officials simply conceded defeat rather than wait for the results of a formal decertification vote.
NLRB Repeal of Election Protection Rule Traps Workers in Union Ranks
Despite these efforts from independent-minded employees, the Biden-Harris NLRB formally repealed the Election Protection Rule in September, dramatically expanding union bosses’ ability to block employee-requested decertification votes.
As a result, now, when workers in Hodzic’s situation attempt to challenge a card check with a secret ballot decertification, the NLRB will automatically block their vote for up to one year after a card check, which opens the door to countless other union delay tactics.
“If these AT&T employees had filed their five decertification petitions after September 30th, they would have been trapped in a union they oppose for years and likely forever,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens.
“This is yet another example of the Biden-Harris NLRB steamrolling the rights of independent-minded employees, so union bosses can expand their forced dues ranks. “Despite this setback for employee freedom, Foundation staff attorneys remain committed to helping workers trapped in union ranks they oppose,” added Semmens. “That includes helping them navigate the increasingly rigged NLRB system.”
