SA Recycling votes to remove United Steelworkers

SA Recycling has successfully voted to remove the United Steelworks (USW) union from power at its Canton, Ohio, facility.

According to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, based in Springfield, Virginia, SA Recycling worker Leslie Frase spearheaded the effort by filing a petition in February in which her coworkers demanded that the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hold a union decertification election at their workplace. The foundation says it provided free legal aid to assist Frase.

Frase’s petition contained enough signatures from her coworkers to trigger a decertification vote under NLRB rules. According to the foundation, the NLRB approved an agreement to set the election date for March 5, stipulating that the vote would take place among “All full-time and regular part-time production and maintenance employees, including truck drivers.” NLRB certified the vote result on March 19.

“Steelworkers union officials had been in our workplace for quite a while and did little to improve our working lives,” Frase says. “Yet dues money was still coming out of our paychecks to support union activities. The fact that we voted the Steelworkers union out by such a wide margin speaks to the fact that employees didn’t think we were getting a good deal. We are very grateful to foundation attorneys for their assistance.”

Frase and her coworkers removed the Pittsburg-based USW union by a tally of 28-12.

The foundation says USW officials had the power to force Frase and her coworkers to pay money to the union hierarchy as a condition of keeping their jobs. The organization says it has noticed an increase in worker requests for help in decertifying unions, noting that petition filings are up about 40 percent from 2020-25. 

“Foundation attorneys were proud to help Ms. Frase and her fellow recycling employees scrap a Steelworkers union they pretty clearly did not want,” Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “However, it’s important to recognize that many employees across the United States have a path to voting out a union that is much more difficult: Many arbitrary Biden-era NLRB rules are still in effect, which give union officials a multitude of ways to stop workers from exercising their right to vote.”