Big Labor War on Secret Ballot Intensifying

Biden NLRB Lawyers Push For Mandatory ‘Card Check’ Unionization

Jennifer Abruzzo, the former union lawyer hand-picked by President Joe Biden to be general counsel for the powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), is dead serious about denying workers the opportunity to cast a private vote before they are corralled into a union.

And Ms. Abruzzo and her legal team are evidently convinced they can bring about this radical and destructive change in federal labor law without any direct action by lawmakers in the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate.

On April 11, Ms. Abruzzo’s office filed a brief calling on the five-member NLRB, which now has a chairman selected by Joe Biden and two other members appointed by him, to overturn decades of board precedents furnishing limited protections for employees and employers from union-boss abuses of power.

Most ominously, the general counsel’s office urged the NLRB to force employers to recognize a union as the monopoly-bargaining agent of all front-line workers if 50% plus one of them signed union authorization cards.

Many Workers ‘Sign Union Cards to Get Union Organizers Off Their Backs’

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented:

“Experience shows many employees sign pro-union cards or petitions while union organizers are watching, even though they do not actually favor unionization.

“In the words of the late Gary Chaison, an eminent Clark University specialist in industrial relations, many workers ‘sign cards to get union organizers off their backs so they can eventually vote against them in an election.’”

Unfortunately, President Biden flatly rejects the long-standing consensus that secret-ballot elections are, with few if any exceptions, far superior to “card checks” as a gauge of whether or not there is majority support among employees for imposition of a union monopoly.

The rationale for Mr. Biden’s strange stance regarding secret-ballot elections was made plain in the first paragraph of a report issued in February by his so-called “Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment.” 

The Biden-Harris Administration regards, as the report explained right off the bat, increasing the share of U.S. employees who are subject to “exclusive” union bargaining, by hook or by crook, to be a top, if not the top, objective.

Ignoring highly relevant facts such as the sharp increase in U.S. presidential election turnout since 1996, even as the national unionization rate has plunged, the report actually declared that increasing unionization is “critical” for “strengthening our democracy”!

Pro-Right to Work Congress Could Wield Appropriations Power to Thwart Power Grab

“The stance taken by General Counsel Abruzzo and her subordinates this April in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific is cynical as well as flagrantly anti-worker,” said Mr. Mix.  “But fortunately, it is not yet the law of the land. 

“Employers will not actually be regarded as guilty of so-called ‘unfair labor practices’ simply because they insist their employees be given a chance to vote in a secret-ballot election before they are put under a union monopoly unless and until the Biden NLRB rules in accord with Ms. Abruzzo’s wishes.

“Since three of the five current members of the NLRB have established track records as radical proponents of compulsory unionism, it is hard to hold out much hope that the Biden NLRB will decide that Ms. Abruzzo and Co. are asking for too much.

“But it may well be that, before the NLRB’s Cemex ruling is issued and becomes entrenched, American voters who are disenchanted with Joe Biden and his failed policies will have had their say and helped put avowed supporters of Right to Work in key congressional leadership positions.”

That’s why the success of the National Right to Work Committee’s decades-old federal candidate survey program will be especially vital this year. By substantially increasing Right to Work strength in Congress, the Committee’s Survey 2022 can end Big Labor Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) tenure as majority leader, and help ensure a Right to Work supporter replaces union boss-puppet Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as House speaker.

Then, in 2023, congressional leaders who are willing to stand up to Joe Biden will be in a position to use their appropriations power to stop the NLRB from enforcing a decision that mandates “card check” unionization of workers.

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