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Friday, March 29, 2024

Card check ruling reverses secret ballot

Becker

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Aug. 30 reversed a 2007 ruling which allowed 30 percent of a company's employees, or another union, to immediately challenge a card check union organizing campaign with a secret ballot vote.

The NLRB voted 3-1 with all President Obama's appointees voting in favor of the reversal of the Dana decision.

The Dana decision held that workers could request a secret ballot election during a 45-day window period following notice that their employer has recognized a union based on a card check organizing drive.

The ruling counteracted coercive practices frequently associated with card check organizing campaigns. These practices include harassment to obtain signature cards that count as "votes" toward unionization.

As reported by Fox News.com in a March 30 2009 article, employees at Indiana's Dana Corp. plant were incensed in 2007, by UAW organizers' tactics and appealed to the NLRB for help.

According to the article, "...plant employees appealed to the National Labor Relations Board that ruled the employees could hold a secret election." One employee was quoted saying, "When they held the election, there was no more union. Although it was close."

The NLRB overturned Dana just as Obama-appointed NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman's term expired.

Meanwhile, Obama-appointed board member Craig Becker, who co-authored a union brief in the original Dana case, refused to recuse himself from the case. Becker, a recess nominee, faces bi-partisan opposition to his confirmation in the U.S. Senate.

One board member, Bryan Hayes, vigorously dissented and called the ruling a blatant roll back of employee freedom.

Any decertification votes that have been cast but not counted by the NLRB will now be discounted, thereby invalidating the voice of thousands of workers nationwide.

Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation made the following statement regarding the ruling:

"Big Labor and its allies have launched a full-scale assault on worker freedom and the Obama Administration is working tirelessly to appease them through bureaucratic means after they failed in Congress.

"The American people and their elected representatives in Congress oppose the Card Check Forced Unionism bill, but the Obama Labor Board seems determined to impose card check on American workers in every way it can.

"Taken with the NLRB's other recent actions, the Obama Administration has made it easier for union operatives to steamroll over workers while making it next to impossible for independent-minded workers to stand up for their rights or decertify the union hierarchy."

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