Posts tagged CalPortland

    Workers in North Carolina and California Ask Federal Labor Board to Nix Policy Letting Union Bosses Block Elections

    January 6, 2026 // The workers, which include miners employed by The Quartz Corp. in Spruce Pine, NC, and Fresno, CA-based construction materials workers for CalPortland, both backed petitions in late 2025 asking the NLRB to administer votes to remove (or “decertify”) unions from their workplaces. Despite both petitions containing enough signatures to trigger union decertification elections, regional NLRB officials blocked both votes pursuant to the NLRB’s current blocking charge policy. This Biden-era policy permits union officials to stymie the union decertification process simply by filing unproven or unrelated “unfair labor practice” charges at the NLRB alleging employer misconduct. Quartz Corp. employee Blake Davis and CalPortland worker Darrell Dunlap have both submitted Requests for Review to the NLRB in Washington, DC.

    US Supreme Court’s ruling in strike case puts unions on defense

    June 8, 2023 // However, workers aren’t shielded unless they take “reasonable precautions” to protect employers’ property from “foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent danger due to the sudden cessation of work.” A 1959 Supreme Court ruling established that courts must defer to the board's initial judgment if it’s even arguable that the legal dispute arises from a strike or other legally-protected worker actions. The lawsuit was essentially an attempt to overturn that precedent. The court didn’t go quite that far (although some conservative justices invited the opportunity to do so in a future case).