National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is helping Theresa Hause in her appeal after her small, local union was merged, without her knowledge, into a larger national unit, blocking local members an opportunity to escape unwanted representation and forced dues

A local woman is in a battle that could have national ramifications regarding unions and their members, and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has taken on her case.

Theresa “Terry” Hause of Vancouver is a Battle Ground school bus driver working for First Student Inc. She has filed an appeal asking the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., to overturn the so-called “merger doctrine” that is being used to block Hause and her colleagues from holding a vote to end forced union dues at their workplace.

Hause’s Request for Review was filed with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

According to the foundation, the NLRB’s non-statutory “merger doctrine” allows union officials to “merge” employees in a smaller bargaining unit into a much larger one. This legal tactic prevents rank-and-file employees exercising their rights under federal law to hold votes to remove unions (known as “decertification elections”) or to end forced-union dues requirements (known as “deauthorization elections”).

Hause told Clark County Today on Tuesday that she and her colleagues had no idea that they were merged into a larger unit until after she had gathered what she thought was the required number of signatures from her local union to hold a vote for deauthorization.

Because employees are suddenly part of a much larger and frequently geographically-dispersed “bargaining unit” with workers they have never met and likely don’t even know the names of, once “merged” it becomes effectively impossible for employees to ever reach the 30% threshold of signatures needed to trigger decertification or deauthorization elections, the foundation noted.

Hause told Clark County Today that she is not anti-union. In fact, she has been a union member most of her working life. She had retired from a job in California, moved to Clark County, and returned to work in Battle Ground. 

She and many of her co-workers became frustrated with the representation they were receiving and wanted to vote to deauthorize, allowing her and her colleagues to opt out of paying union dues without losing their jobs. She said she got more than the required number of signatures to proceed with a vote.

“That’s when they came back and said you belong to a national contract,” Hause said Tuesday. “We’ve never been given that contract, we were never told about that contract, and we never used that contract.”

According to the foundation’s press release, Hause’s request to end the “merger doctrine” follows a decision by the NLRB Regional Director applying the doctrine after her request for a deauthorization election. Hause and some of her colleagues wanted to stop Teamsters Local 58 union officials from having the power to require all drivers pay fees or else be fired. Such a vote is necessary because Hause and her colleagues work in the state of Washington, which lacks Right to Work protections that make union financial support strictly voluntary.

In previous First Student cases, the “merger doctrine” was wielded by Teamsters officials to block votes at multiple locations on the grounds that the workers there were actually part of one  massive bargaining unit with more than 22,000 drivers in more than 100 locations in 33 states. For example, a group of less than 10 Wisconsin workers filed a majority-backed petition to remove (i.e. “decertify”) the Teamsters as soon as allowed by federal law, only to be stymied by the “merger doctrine” because they had been secretly “merged” into a multi-company unit of around 24,000 workers.

That is what happened in Clark County with Hause and her colleagues. A local union was merged into the national union, taking power away from local members.

The foundation reported that after the Regional Director sided with the Teamsters to block the workers from voting, an appeal was filed to the five-seat National Labor Relations Board in Was Washington, DC. Currently the NLRB lacks a quorum to act because there are only two Board members. However, President Trump could appoint three new Members who could then rule on Hause’s request for review once they are confirmed by the United States Senate.

“This case shows how Teamsters bosses, aided by biased NLRB-concocted rules, disenfranchise workers and trap them in union ranks and forced dues payments, effectively in perpetuity,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix via the foundation’s press release. “It’s time for the NLRB to overhaul the arbitrary rules, including the so-called ‘merger doctrine,’ that are being used to eviscerate workers’ statutory rights under the National Labor Relations Act to hold a vote to remove a union opposed by a majority of employees or vote to end forced-dues requirements.” Mix added that ending the “merger doctrine” would be an “excellent way” for the incoming Trump NLRB majority to signal that it is putting employee rights and freedoms front and center.

Hause just wants the local union members to have a say in who and how they are represented. If the representation is not satisfactory, she and her colleagues should have the right to not pay their dues and keep their jobs. She says they are being handcuffed to this national contract that no one in Clark County was aware of until recently.

For more information on the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, go to: https://www.nrtw.org/

Note: Clark County Today reporter Paul Valencia contributed to this report.