ICYMI: What the New NLRB Majority Should Do for Workers Like Me

Michael Alcorn, a Trader Joe's employee and visiting fellow at the Institute for the American Worker, published an op-ed in The Hill yesterday making a direct case to the newly confirmed NLRB majority: close the blocking charge loophole.

Alcorn writes from experience. He worked at the first Trader Joe's store to ever unionize, opposed the decision, and later joined more than 46 percent of his coworkers in signing a petition to decertify the union. They never got a vote. Trader Joe's United filed blocking charges, alleging violations ranging from the store's dress code to threats, many of them years old, and Biden's NLRB froze the process in its tracks.

His case is simple and damning. Federal law guarantees workers the right to hold elections, including to remove unions. But under the rules handed down by the Biden NLRB, a union can file charges at any moment to stop a decertification election cold, leaving workers locked into representation they no longer want while the paperwork winds through investigation and litigation for months or years. The fix, Alcorn writes, is straightforward . Let the election proceed, resolve the charges separately, and stop letting procedural filings substitute for a vote.

Alcorn was one of the workers who co-signed CPAW's formal Petition for Rulemaking to the Board earlier this year, making exactly this ask.

The piece also calls on the new majority to reverse the Biden-era ban on Employer Meetings on Unionization and to address the Cemex decision, which, as Alcorn puts it, allows a union to be certified even when workers voted against it.

The Senate confirmed a 3-1 Republican NLRB majority last month. American workers like Michael Alcorn are watching what comes next.

Read the full piece here: The Hill