NORTH HUNTINGDON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Employees at North Huntingdon EMS/Rescue voted unanimously to remove Teamsters Local 205 as their union representative after months of what workers described as union-driven delays.
Shannon Martin filed the decertification petition with the National Labor Relations Board, with legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, which led to the vote, the foundation said in a press release.
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The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees private-sector labor law and union elections, administered the decertification process.
Martin, with legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, filed three petitions seeking a vote to remove the union. According to the foundation, each petition either showed unanimous worker support or otherwise met the threshold under NLRB rules to trigger an election.
NLRB officials in Pittsburgh delayed the vote for several months, citing the agency’s “voluntary recognition bar,” a policy that can block decertification elections for a period after a union is recognized through a card check process rather than a secret-ballot vote.
Under card check, a union may be recognized if a majority of employees sign authorization cards instead of holding a formal election. Because Pennsylvania is not a Right to Work state, union contracts may require employees to pay union fees.
In mid-February, more than a year after the Teamsters was recognized through card check at North Huntingdon EMS/Rescue, Martin filed a third decertification petition with legal assistance from attorneys with the National Right to Work Foundation.
That petition led the NLRB to schedule a vote, and on March 3, employees voted unanimously to remove the union.
The foundation has pushed to eliminate the NLRB’s voluntary recognition bar and opposed the Biden board’s repeal of an earlier rule that allowed workers to seek a secret-ballot election after card check.
