Press Releases

Today, Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Republican Leader Rick Allen (R-GA) sent a letter to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) Chairman Lauren M. McFerran requesting the agency return to manual, onsite, secret-ballot elections.
 
In the letter, Foxx and Allen write: “We write to express our concerns with the NLRB’s recent shift to conducting predominantly mail-ballot elections for union-representation elections. Mail-ballot elections lower voter participation and jeopardize workers’ rights to choose freely and fairly whether to be represented by a union. … The expanded use of mail ballots has also exposed other problems with this election method, including difficulties verifying signatures on mail ballot envelopes, inappropriate voter solicitation, and technical difficulties with the video count of mail ballots. The Board has determined that individuals are eligible to vote in mail-ballot elections where the employee has stopped working for the employer weeks before the ballot count. Further, postal delays have caused mail ballots to arrive late which the NLRB then refused to count, thereby disenfranchising voters. None of these problems exist in manual elections.” 
 
The letter continues: “It is critical for the NLRB to return to manual onsite secret-ballot elections, which have the highest levels of voter participation. This is crucial because only a majority of votes cast, instead of a majority of the eligible voters in the bargaining unit, determines whether a union is certified as the exclusive representative for all employees in the bargaining unit. The decision to form a union affects nearly all aspects of an employee’s work life, and the Board should not use election methods that decrease voter participation or increase the risk of coercion.”
 
The letter concludes: “The Board’s decision in Aspirus Keweenaw to expand the use of mail ballots addressed the extraordinary circumstances involving the COVID-19 pandemic. With the pandemic over, so too are the extraordinary circumstances the Board relied on in that case.”
 
Read the full letter here.

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