Employers legally gerrymander bargaining units to dilute pro-union votes by adding anti-union workers to the eligible voter pool

When workers petition for a union election, a critical preliminary fight occurs over who gets to vote. The employer and the union propose different definitions of the 'bargaining unit' — which job titles, departments, shifts, and locations are included. Employers routinely seek to expand the unit by adding workers they believe are anti-union. If warehouse workers in Building A want to organize, the employer argues that warehouse workers in Building B, C, and D — who were not part of the organizing campaign and have shown no interest in a union — should be included in the vote. If the organizers have strong support among 50 workers in Building A but the employer successfully adds 150 indifferent or hostile workers from other buildings, the election math flips from a likely win to a likely loss. This is not abstract procedural maneuvering — it directly determines whether specific workers get to exercise their statutory right to organize. Workers who spend months building support, collecting authorization cards, and risking employer retaliation can have their campaign destroyed before a single vote is cast, simply because the employer convinced the NLRB regional director to define the unit more broadly. The workers in Building A still have the same workplace problems. They still want a union. But the vote now includes hundreds of people who were never part of the campaign, have not attended organizing meetings, and may have been subjected to targeted anti-union messaging from the employer. The election becomes a referendum in a district the employer drew. The structural reason this works is that the NLRA gives the NLRB broad discretion to determine 'appropriate' bargaining units, and the standard — community of interest — is vague enough to be argued either way. The Trump-era NLRB expanded employers' ability to challenge proposed units and add additional groups of workers, making gerrymandering easier. The Biden-era NLRB tried to narrow this by reinstating Obama-era election rules, but the Trump Board seated in late 2025 is expected to reverse course again. There is no bright-line rule saying 'workers who petitioned define their own unit.' Every organizing campaign must litigate this question, adding weeks or months of delay and legal costs — delay that employers exploit to run anti-union campaigns while workers wait for an election date.