The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is pushing the National Labor Relations Board to overhaul its rules governing union decertification elections, arguing that current procedures unfairly trap workers in unions they no longer support. In a formal rulemaking petition, the group calls on the board to eliminate several non-statutory obstacles that it says violate the plain language of the National Labor Relations Act and disenfranchise workers seeking a vote on union representation.
The petition arrives as the board, now with a third Trump appointee seated in August, holds a Republican majority. The foundation points to the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the doctrine of Chevron deference, giving courts—and agencies—new latitude to reject expansive interpretations of federal law. That ruling, the foundation argues, removes any excuse for the board to maintain rules that go beyond what Congress intended.
“The Trump board can and should promptly act on the rulemaking petition to enforce the text of the National Labor Relations Act and, in the process, defend workers’ free choice,” said Mark Mix, president of the foundation, in a statement accompanying the petition. “Doing so would restore the Labor Board to its task of neutrally enforcing the law, rather than rigging the rules—as especially happened under the Biden and Obama Boards—to disenfranchise workers opposed to union affiliation.”
The petition targets several specific barriers. Chief among them is the “successor bar,” which blocks decertification votes for a period after a change in business ownership. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down that rule in July, citing Loper Bright. The foundation also wants the board to eliminate the “settlement bar,” which can block a vote if the board reaches a settlement with a union that workers were not party to, and the “contract bar,” which can delay a vote for up to three years after a collective bargaining agreement is signed, regardless of worker dissatisfaction.
Another focus is the “recognition bar,” which prevents secret-ballot decertification votes when a union is recognized through “card check” procedures—where workers sign authorization cards rather than voting in an election. The foundation calls this process “abuse-prone” and argues that workers should always have the right to challenge such recognition through a secret ballot.
The petition also takes aim at the Biden-era “blocking charge” policy, which allows union officials to delay elections by filing misconduct charges against employers, often without evidence. The foundation says these charges are frequently unrelated to the election but have the effect of stalling worker-requested votes. A case in point: workers at Reed and Perrine Lawn Products in New Jersey filed a decertification petition in November 2024, but the union used blocking charges to delay the vote for 18 months. When the charges were finally dismissed in April 2026, the union did not even contest the election.
The foundation also cites a recent study finding that 95 percent of currently unionized workers under the National Labor Relations Act have never voted for the union that represents them. To address this, the petition asks the board to require unions to periodically prove majority support through a vote.
“Effective unions that workers voluntarily support have nothing to fear from these reforms,” Mix said. “But for workers like those at Reed and Perrine—trapped for a year and a half by their own union because of dubious charges—these reforms could be the only way out.”
The push comes amid a broader conservative effort to reshape labor policy, with the board under Republican leadership already signaling a more employer-friendly direction. The foundation's petition is likely to be met with fierce opposition from organized labor, which argues that such rules are necessary to maintain stability in collective bargaining relationships.
But Mix insists the issue is not about unions versus employers. “This isn’t a fight between unions and employers, but a question of whether workers get a say in who represents them,” he said. “The law already says what the board must do: When workers petition for a vote, that vote must be held. The Trump board has the petition on its desk. After the Loper Bright decision, it has no excuse left to leave it there.”
