(The Center Square) − An employee at Wayne Sanderson Farms’ poultry facility in Hammond is urging the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., to allow over 500 coworkers to vote United Food and Commercial Workers Local 455 out of their workplace.
“This union doesn’t represent us, and it’s ridiculous that the UFCW is manipulating this one dated NLRB policy to keep us trapped in the union, even though most of us have expressed interest in voting the union out,” Coty Hally, the employee, said.
Hally, with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, is challenging a decision from an NLRB Regional Director that blocked his coworkers from holding a decertification vote. The decision cited the “contract bar,” a non-statutory policy that prevents union removal efforts for up to three years after a collective bargaining agreement is signed.
“The contract-bar is a Board created limitation on employee statutory rights to seek an election and determine their own representative,” Hally’s formal Request for Review states. “It is not found in the text of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA]…and it conflicts with the Act’s core purpose.”
“UFCW union officials have been dragging their feet and have not been negotiating good contracts for me and my coworkers,” Hally added. “My colleagues and I – not union officials – should be deciding whether the union stays or goes.”
The request notes that Hally submitted a petition signed by more than 275 workers in a 550-person bargaining unit — a majority — seeking a vote to remove the union. NLRB rules typically require only 30% support to trigger a vote, but Region 15 dismissed the petition under the contract bar rule.
“This bar contradicts the Act’s well-established ‘bedrock principles of employee free choice and majority rule’…because it grants monopoly bargaining status…even in the face of objective evidence proving the union has lost majority support,” Hally’s filing states.
The filing also raises concerns that even informal, unpublished agreements between employers and unions — made without worker knowledge — can trigger the contract bar and block votes.
“If union bosses are truly doing right by the workers they claim to ‘represent,’ they should have no problem letting workers exercise their right to vote on the union’s control,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Unfortunately, union officials hungry for dues and power still enjoy many legal privileges that let them override workers’ will and rights, not the least of which is the pernicious ‘contract bar.'”
Patrick Semmens, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation, told The Center Square that under current labor law, workers can request a union vote if at least 30% of the workforce supports it—both to form or remove a union.
In Hally’s case, he said the workers met that threshold to trigger a decertification vote, but the NLRB dismissed the petition under the contract bar policy, which is not included in the actual labor statute.
Semmens noted that the rule is an old policy created by the NLRB and not part of the National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations.
The Foundation is now asking the board to review the case and either eliminate the contract bar entirely or, at minimum, limit it to one year—the only duration actually outlined in the law for similar restrictions.
He added that more than half of the 550 employees in the bargaining unit signed the petition to remove the union.
Semmens emphasized that workers are seeking a vote to completely decertify the union — not just its leadership — so that they can return to a non-union workplace.
Semmens also pointed out that without union representation, employees could engage directly with management and potentially pursue ideas that improve workplace conditions. Under a union contract, even these kinds of direct conversations can be prohibited.
