Unionized employees who no longer want to be represented by a union will have a harder time realizing their wishes through decertification elections due to a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule issued July 26. The effective date of the new rule is Sept. 30.
The change made by the board—known as a blocking charge change—“means unions now can effectively prevent employees from shedding themselves of a union they don’t want,” said John Ring, an attorney with Morgan Lewis in Washington, D.C., who is a former chairman of the NLRB.
The final rule returns to the board’s pre-2020 practice on blocking charges before an election and restores the NLRB regional directors’ authority to delay an election if unfair labor practice conduct is sufficiently serious to interfere with employee free choice, the NLRB said in a press release. The rule reversed the board’s 2020 rule that required regional directors to run elections even if unfair labor practices were alleged, the board said.
When employees become dissatisfied with their union and decide to decertify, which the law allows them to do, now all their union needs to do is file an unfair labor practice and that stops—or blocks—the decertification process from moving forward, Ring said.
“Then, the NLRB takes a year or more to investigate the charge, during which employees remain stuck with a union,” he said. “Over the years, there were tremendous blocking charge abuses, which the 2020 rule was designed to...
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