Press Releases

Today, Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chairman Rick Allen (R-GA) sent letters to six union leaders expressing concerns about their failure to protect union members’ personal information.
 
The letters to the United Auto Workers; the Service Employees International Union; the Communications Workers of America; the National Education Association; the American Federation of Teachers; and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America come following widespread union data breaches that impacted more than a million workers, including the ransomware attack at the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) where the personal information of more than 500,000 individuals was stolen.
 
In the letters, Walberg and Allen write: “In 2023, the New York-based labor union, UNITE HERE, experienced a breach which may have put 791,273 members at risk. In this instance, hackers gained most of the same information about union members that was seized in the PSEA breach, and UNITE HERE failed to effectively protect workers’ sensitive information. In February 2025, the union agreed to pay $6 million to resolve a class action lawsuit related to the breach.”
 
The letters continue: “Unions are privy to workers’ data for many reasons. However, these data breaches call into question whether it is necessary for a union to amass such an array of critical data on its members, particularly when the members are at extreme risk if the information is stolen.”
 
The letters conclude: “[T]he [National Labor Relations Board] requires that unions receive personal information for the purpose of communicating with workers who are eligible voters in a union election. This information includes individuals’ full names, work locations, shifts, job classifications, home addresses, personal email addresses, and personal cell phone numbers. In order to ensure the union is taking the necessary steps to protect the employee data it collects and to assess whether all this data is necessary, the Committee requests that you provide the following information no later than May 22, 2025.”

Read the United Auto Workers letter here.
Read the Service Employees International Union letter here.
Read the Communications Workers of America letter here.
Read the National Education Association letter here.
Read the American Federation of Teachers letter here.
Read the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America letter here.

###