The National Labor Relations Board finalized its anticipated rollback of several Trump-era union elections rules that will make it harder for employers to decertify or challenge union claims of majority status.
The Final Rule, which will likely take effect on September 30, reinstates the Board’s blocking charge procedures, changes the Board’s approach to the “voluntary recognition bar” to further insulate unions and rescinds rules that provided special exceptions for challenging voluntary recognition in the construction industry. We previously covered the Proposed Rule in a 2022 blog post, and the Final Rule closely mirrors the proposal.
The return to pre-2020 blocking charge procedures represents the most significant rule change for most employers. Under the blocking charge policy, an employer or a union can petition the Board to delay a representation election if any pending unfair labor practice charges have the potential to interfere with free choice in the election. In practice, unions often use blocking charges to attempt to delay decertification elections when employees seek to oust unpopular representatives, or representation elections when the unions anticipate defeat. The rule allows a party to an election to file unfair labor practices in anticipation of an election to attempt to delay that process, even if the charges have questionable merit. Then, the party that filed the charge can have more time to convince the employees to support them before the election...
The Trump administration’s fraud prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center is set for arraignment on Thursday afternoon. Ahead of the scheduled court appearance in Alabama, defense lawyers fo...