(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Biden administration has announced that it will be revoking a 2020 rule from the National Labor Relations Board that was implemented to protect workers’ right to vote on removing union representation.
The Election Protection Rule was adopted in 2020 as an attempt to reform the processes of unions across the nation, such as prohibiting union officials from filing “blocking charges,” which would prevent employees from voting out union representatives in their workplace, Just the News reported.
“The Biden-appointed NLRB majority—two of whom were union lawyers when nominated for their seats on the Board—is once again protecting union boss power to the detriment of the statutory rights of rank-and-file workers,” National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix said.
“Make no mistake, reversing the Election Protection Rule will mean more workers trapped in forced union ranks they oppose, and more denials of worker requests for basic secret-ballot votes regarding union status,” he said.
Mix said the Biden admin’s “anti-worker response” to the rule allowed Big Labor allies to trap workers in unions and prevent changes in union leadership.
Data gathered by NLRB showed that a unionized private-sector worker was twice more likely to attempt to decertify union representation than a nonunion worker was to unionize.
Pro-union groups have argued that the “surge in worker organizing is the largest in more than 50 years,” the average number of petitions and attempted decertifications filed in the first nine months of 2022 has risen astronomically.
One year after the Election Protection Rule went into effect, over 7,000 employees at 54 workplaces exercised their right to hold votes and remove union officials from their positions.
It would be difficult for employees to remove tyrannical union despots upon elimination of the Election Protection Rule.
The NLRB has made other moves as well, hoping to re-establish rules that would make it easier for unions to form without secret ballot elections.