(The Center Square) – A group of In-Home Sales Experts for AT&T Mobility in Tennessee successfully removed union officials from their workplace, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
Communications Workers of America had attempted to unionize the workers, but Denis Hodzic pushed back with a decertification petition to the National Labor Relations Board.
The petition would have led to a vote to remove the union for AT&T Mobility In-Home Sales Experts in the state but instead CWA filed paperwork to disclaim interest in the workers, avoiding a vote.
CWA officials’ objections to the decertification petition were denied by the NLRB last month. NLRB documents showed workers would have become part of a bargaining unit of thousands of employees nationwide had the unionization effort succeeded, National Right to Work said.
“Because Tennessee is a right to work state, CWA union officials never had the power to force Hodzic and his colleagues to pay union dues or join the union as a condition of employment,” the organization said. “However, even in right to work states, union officials can still force their one-size-fits-all contracts on all employees in a work unit, even those who oppose the union. A successful decertification election ends this monopoly bargaining power.”
The union had used a card check instead of a secret ballot process, meaning union officials can use face-to-face interactions to convince workers to sign cards.
“Despite claiming to speak for workers, union bosses and their allies in the Biden NLRB seem to be intent on further constricting workers’ ability to have secure, private votes on whether union bosses deserve to have control over their working lives,” National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix said in a statement. “Mr. Hodzic and his coworkers’ victory should serve as a reminder that ‘card check’ is not a reliable indicator of employee support for a union, and that giving this process priority over secret ballot elections will trap more workers under union boss control against their will.”
