Washington, DC – The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), composed of more than 500 major business and trade organizations, released the following statement today in response to the NLRB’s Council of the General Counsel’s brief in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC, in which the CGC calls on the Board to overturn five significant cases and standards in order to tip the scales in favor of unions.  Most troubling of the changes proposed by the CGC is replacing secret ballots as the preferred method for determining whether employees want union representation with “authorization cards,” which are not private and are signed in front of coworkers and union organizers.

The following statement can be attributed to CDW Chair Kristen Swearingen:

“General Counsel Abruzzo is pushing unionization at the expense of employees, who would be forced to cast  “votes” in union representation elections by signing cards in front of union organizers rather than in an NLRB-supervised, secret ballot election. Card check is notoriously vulnerable to fraud and coercion by union organizers who try to force workers to sign the cards with threats and misleading statements about what the cards actually mean. Allowing this back door organizing will only disenfranchise workers of their right to vote on union representation and expose workers to intimidation and harassment.

“Abruzzo is advocating for changes that will ensure unions have a monopoly over the information provided to employees before deciding whether or not they want union representation. This is despite Supreme Court and NLRB precedent protecting free speech rights and the importance of debate. Her efforts should concern anyone interested in protecting privacy, free speech, and due process rights.

“The General Counsel and the NLRB are supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law, but Abruzzo again is demonstrating her complete inability to fulfill that responsibility. The Board should reject her blatantly partisan efforts to tip the scales in favor of unions.”