NLRB Rejects USW Union Boss Attempt to Impose Contract Workers Voted Down to Block Election to Remove Union

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Kerry Hunsberger and her coworkers at Latrobe Specialty Metals Company have scored a victory in their effort to vote United Steelworkers (USW) union officials out of their facility. Hunsberger and her coworkers are challenging USW officials’ secret “ratification” of a union contract that workers had overwhelmingly voted down twice, and union officials’ contention that the employees should be barred from exercising their right to oust the union because of that contract.

A decision from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Regional Director in Pittsburgh now orders a union “decertification election” to be held among Hunsberger and her colleagues on December 6. In August, Hunsberger submitted to the NLRB a petition backed by the requisite number of her colleagues to trigger such a vote, but USW union bosses dragged their feet and argued that a non-statutory NLRB policy, the so-called “contract bar,” should block the employees’ right to vote because a contract was in place. […]

“It remains outrageous that, had Steelworkers bosses merely added dates to this contract, the NLRB would have likely ruled that it was perfectly allowable for union officials to lie to workers, ignore their votes to reject the contract, and then trap them under union control and forced dues payments for at least three more years,” Mix added. “This highlights the injustice of the NLRB-concocted ‘contract bar’ policy that arbitrarily blocks workers’ statutory right to vote out union officials they oppose, and how it is antithetical to the NLRB’s supposed goal of defending employee free choice.”

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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