Workers overwhelmingly want a free choice when it comes to deciding whether to associate with a union. But the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Biden-Harris Administration instead imposed policy after policy that gave union bosses enormous power to sweep workers into union ranks and force them to pay union dues against their will.
President Trump’s two pending Labor Board appointees must be ready to hack away at the Biden NLRB’s restrictive policies and restore worker freedom as soon as they are confirmed.
First up should be reversing the Biden Board’s Cemex decision, which gave union officials the power to bypass a traditional vote among workers, and seize power in a workplace through the abuse-prone “card check” method. Card check lacks the security of a secret-ballot vote, and lets union officials pressure and cajole workers into signing union authorization cards that are later counted as “votes” for the union.
Unsurprisingly, workers often report that union organizers use intimidation, lies, and outright threats to collect such cards. Yet under Cemex, union boss demands for recognition based on cards cannot be ignored.
Gallup’s most recent data on the subject reveals that 60 percent of American workers have no interest at all in joining a union. Yet the Biden NLRB sought to make it both easier for union officials to gain power over workers, and harder to oust a union opposed by a majority of workers.
In 2024, the Biden majority nixed the Election Protection Rule, a set of 2020 Trump NLRB reforms that significantly limited the tactics union officials could use to delay or block worker-requested votes to remove unwanted unions. This rule change came despite the NLRB’s own data showing that the filing of petitions seeking union decertification petitions is up over 50 percent since 2020. Seems the Biden NLRB took this as a reason to block the exits.
Without the Election Protection Rule, workers can no longer force a secret-ballot vote if union bosses gain power through the abuse-prone card check process. Eliminating 2020 reforms also meant union officials can once again stall or block votes to remove unions through filing – sometimes repeatedly – unproven allegations, a tactic known as “blocking charges.”
Fortunately, a National Right to Work Foundation case is already underway for a Chicago-area chemical plant employee seeking to reverse this pernicious doctrine. In addition to reestablishing the Election Protection Rule reforms, the Trump NLRB should go further and eliminate other non-statutory restrictions on workers’ right to vote out an unwanted union.
The Biden NLRB also took action to ensure union officials can impose their monopoly representation on individuals who are not traditional employees. In 2021, instead of letting a proposed rule go into effect that would have ensured that federal labor law regarded graduate students as students and not employees subject to forced unionization, the Biden appointees withdrew the rule.
What followed was a wave of extremist, often anti-Israel agitation by union officials on college campuses, paired with demands that Jewish graduate students pay union dues or give up their pursuit of a graduate degree. Foundation attorneys have recently helped graduate students file antidiscrimination cases and other legal actions that challenge union coercion on campus. The Trump NLRB can use some of these cases to end the forced unionization of graduate students at private universities.
The Trump Board should also protect traditional employees from being forced to fund union politics they oppose. Multiple Foundation-backed workers are urging the NLRB to create a federal standard requiring union bosses to seek affirmative consent before taking dues for politics – instead of requiring workers jump through arbitrary hoops to opt-out of such deductions.
The Biden Labor Board went all out to expand the coercive powers of union bosses, even though much of that power came at the expense of the rights of rank-and-file employees. Fortunately, the Trump NLRB will soon be equipped with new appointees and a set of new cases to reverse dysfunctional Biden-era policies. Once confirmed, they should get right to work standing up for workers and defending their freedoms – including the freedom not to affiliate with a union.
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Foundation
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