GEO Specialty Chemicals Workers Vote Out Unpopular Steelworkers Union Bosses

GEO Specialty Chemicals employee Ryne Fox and his coworkers have just voted unwanted United Steelworkers (USW) Local 13-725 union bosses out of power at their workplace. The vote, in which 75% of the work unit voted to remove the union, came after Fox filed a petition for a “decertification vote” with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

Fox filed the “decertification petition” on September 24, 2022, asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold a vote among employees on whether the union should be removed. Because of a union boss-friendly NLRB policy known as the so-called “contract bar,” Fox timed the filing of the petition to coincide with the expiration of USW officials’ contract with GEO management. The non-statutory “contract bar” arbitrarily immunizes union officials from being voted out of a workplace during the life of a union contract, typically lasting one to three years. […]

“Workers across the country are increasingly exercising their right to vote out union officials they oppose, and we at the Foundation are happy to aid workers in defending this essential element of free association,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “However, we’re also acutely aware of the obstacles that stand in the way of this freedom, and one of those, which Steelworkers officials seem to have no reservations about exploiting, is the ‘contract bar.’”

“The unjustified ‘contract bar’ is always wrong because it prevents workers from voting out unions they oppose when they want to. But even worse, this NLRB-invented doctrine actually incentivizes union officials to rush ahead and impose unpopular, self-serving contracts for the very purpose of insulating the union’s forced representation powers from a vote of the workers they claim to ‘represent,’” Mix added.

NATIONAL RIGHT TO WORK LEGAL DEFENSE FOUNDATION

All contents from this article were originally published on the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Website.

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