House Committee Releases Damning Report On NLRB Mail-Ballot Election Misconduct & Mismanagement
An investigation into the National Labor Relations Board's handling of mail-ballot elections during COVID found "mismanagement, misconduct, and procedural irregularities."
By Peter List, Editor | May 9, 2024
On Thursday, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx released a Committee staff report detailing the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) misconduct and procedural irregularities related to the agency’s administration of mail ballot elections.
“Through blatant misconduct that resulted in the disenfranchisement of workers participating union in elections, the NLRB has outright corrupted its once gold standard of secret ballot, onsite elections,” stated Chairwoman Foxx. “As this report makes clear, the NLRB’s administration of mail ballot elections has become deeply fraught with procedural misconduct and gross irregularities.”
During the COVID pandemic, in the Aspirus Keweenaw decision, the Board expanded NLRB regional directors’ authority to order a union representation elections be conducted by mail rather than in person. This resulted in a significant increase in mail-ballot elections during the pandemic.
As the Committee report explains, due to the increase of mail-ballot elections, voter participation “decreased substantially while other problems with this election method were exposed, including inappropriate voter solicitation, increased lost or void ballots, and difficulties verifying signatures.”
In addition, according to the report, a NLRB employee whistleblower came forward and exposed “institutional issues at the Board, alleging that NLRB employees had interfered in representational elections involving Starbucks and Workers United.”
Related: NLRB Approves Union Win By Mail Ballot Despite Postal Delays Disenfranchising Majority of Voters
The whistleblower, upon subpoena, later provided the Committee with “more than 500 pages of documents, including documents from 33 representation cases.”
Following the launch of an investigation, the House Committee was able to identify “widespread mismanagement, misconduct, and procedural irregularities in the NLRB’s administration of mail ballot elections.”
This mismanagement and misconduct by the NLRB was not limited to just Starbucks and Workers United though, however, it involved a myriad of employers and unions.
The Committee report provides numerous examples of NLRB agents coordinating with union officials, sending out extra ballots at the request of union officials (not employees), as well as trying to coverup mistakes.
For example:
A case in the Seattle region where a Board agent responded to questions about a particular voter and her ballot that were posed by an attorney representing the union. These answers followed the attorney’s own admission that the NLRB should not be communicating with him about this matter: “I know I’m not supposed to coordinate with the Region directly on this …”. The stipulated election agreement stated that eligible voters, not attorneys representing the parties, were to ask for ballots: “If any eligible voter does not receive a mail ballot or otherwise requires a duplicate mail ballot kit, he or she should contact the Region 19 office by no later than 4:45 p.m. on Friday, April 15, 2022 in order to arrange for another mail ballot kit to be sent to that employee”. Key takeaway: Board officials providing duplicate ballots to voters at the request of the union, and not at the request of the voters, violates the election agreement. [Emphasis added. Page 5 of the Committee’s report.]
As another example:
On March 19, 2021, internal emails show that the NLRB realized that there were two ballots with the same number with different names on them. Upon realization, one NLRB employee stated, “Ok. Let’s hope the parties don’t ask much in the way of questions.” Another NLRB employee asked if she should change the number on the ballot. Emails suggest the NLRB changed the number on the ballot to remedy this error. Such tampering with ballots is not authorized by the NLRB case handling manual or the Stipulated Election Agreement in this case. [Emphasis added. Page 5 of the Committee’s report]
The Committee’s report also highlights the lack of voter participation in mail-ballot elections, stating:
Internal agency statistics show that, as of January 29, 2022, the mail ballot participation rate for Fiscal Year 2022 mail ballot elections was 67.8 percent, while the manual ballot participation rate was 85.9 percent. During the same period, 3 percent of the ballots cast in mail ballot elections were voided, while the void rate was only one percent for manual elections. [Emphasis added. Page 12 of the Committee’s report]
Read the whole Committee report here.
