On April 23, 2025, the NAM filed an amicus brief in support of a manufacturer’s challenge to the Biden NLRB’s standard for union recognition—card check. Back in 2023, the NLRB issued its decision in Cemex, imposing a new framework that greatly expands the Board’s ability to force unions on employees without a secret ballot election. The framework relies on the controversial and notoriously flawed card check where employees are forced to vote for or against the union in front of coworkers and union organizers by signing or not signing authorization cards. The Board’s decision reverses a half-century of NLRB precedent and is at odds with long-standing Supreme Court and federal court rulings that have routinely criticized the card check method for being “admittedly inferior” and an “unreliable method.”
In this case, the NLRB relied on Cemex to require a manufacturer to bargain with a union as the exclusive collective-bargaining unit after agreeing with an administrative law judge that the manufacturer violated the National Labor Relations Act. We explain in our amicus brief that the card check standard is contrary to U.S. Supreme Court precedent and violates the Administrative Procedure Act because the standard is, in essence, a rule issued without notice and comment rulemaking.