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Over 160 House Members Urge House Leadership to Provide Funding so NLRB Can Conduct Electronic Elections


Last week, House Representatives Andy Levin, Brian Fitzpatrick, and more than 160 other House members wrote a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, urging that funding be provided to enable the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) to hold union elections electronically.

Readers will likely recall that union elections had been postponed a few weeks ago, when the coronavirus pandemic initially broke out. The NLRB indicated it was suspending elections for a few weeks as it did not believe it could safely oversee elections, given concerns over the health and safety of NLRB employees that would be required to be involved with any elections that occurred.  However, the NLRB had recently issued a press release stating that elections could begin again.

In the letter, the members of the House write that the NLRB has previously allowed electronic voting (allowing telephonic voting since 2002 and allowing internet voting since 2007.)  However, the members of the House suggested that the NLRB currently does not have the resources to conduct electronic elections and therefore asked House leadership to appropriate the necessary funds to allow this to happen.

I suspect that both Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McCarthy have other priorities to attend to right now (well, whenever the House returns to session that is.)  However, I would not be surprised if this request for funding made it into another stimulus bill at some point, given that there is at least some measure of bipartisan support for the matter, given the House members that joined in the letter.


For a copy of the letter:  https://andylevin.house.gov/sites/andylevin.house.gov/files/Letter%20re%20union%20electronic%20voting%20FINAL%204.19.20%20.pdf


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