The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) expansion of mail ballot elections has led to widespread mismanagement, misconduct and procedural irregularities by the agency, according to a report released Thursday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The NLRB issued a decision in November 2020 expanding regional agency directors’ ability to order that union elections operate by mail rather than the traditional manual ballot due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the decision, voter turnout has decreased while both institutional issues, like employees interfering in elections, and integrity issues, like inappropriate voter solicitation and the number of lost or void ballots, have increased, according to the report.
The investigation spawned as a result of a former NLRB employee cooperating with the committee to detail instances covering 15 different NLRB regions and 33 representation cases, according to the report.
“Through blatant misconduct that resulted in the disenfranchisement of workers participating in union elections, the NLRB has outright corrupted its once gold standard of secret ballot, onsite elections,” Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx told the DCNF. “By broadening its own authority and instituting a series of administrative changes that emboldened its own cadre of regional directors, the agency took risks that alienated voters. As this report makes clear, the NLRB’s administration of mail ballot elections has become deeply fraught with procedural misconduct and gross irregularities.”
