Nurses at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC, filed a decertification petition in April 2026 to vote out the District of Columbia Nurses Association, their current bargaining representative. DCNA responded by filing unfair labor practice charges against the hospital — triggering the NLRB's longstanding "blocking charge" policy, which suspends decertification elections until ULP charges are resolved. Now the petitioning nurse, Elizabeth Abraha, is asking the NLRB to overrule that policy as a violation of the National Labor Relations Act itself.
The Blocking Charge Problem
The blocking charge policy is a non-statutory NLRB rule — meaning it exists by board precedent, not because Congress wrote it into the NLRA. The policy allows unions to delay decertification elections indefinitely by filing unproven unfair labor practice charges whenever a decertification petition is submitted. Under current rules, the NLRB suspends the election while it investigates, a process that can take months or years.
Abraha's argument cuts directly to the statute. Section 9 of the National Labor Relations Act states that when a question of representation exists, the Board "shall" investigate and direct an election. That "shall" is mandatory language. The blocking charge policy substitutes the Board's discretion for what the statute says is a requirement — investigate and vote.
Abraha was not given access to the hearing or the details of the ULP charges DCNA filed — a procedural issue that compounds the substantive one. Nurses who signed the decertification petition are, in effect, being blocked from exercising a statutory right by a union filing charges they can't even review.
What the GWU Nurses Actually Want
This story is often misread as anti-union, but that framing misses what's actually happening. These nurses are not opposing the concept of collective bargaining — they are opposing this specific union's representation of them. They want to choose. The blocking charge policy, as constructed, denies them that choice by allowing the incumbent union to hold the process hostage with unproven charges.
The quote from the filing captures the argument: "The NLRB should be defending employee free choice, not inventing policies that protect incumbent union bosses from being voted out by rank-and-file workers." That's a pointed framing, but it's accurate about what the blocking charge policy does in practice.
NLRB Board Dynamics
The Trump administration appointed James R. Murphy as NLRB chairman in March 2026. The current board composition is more favorable to worker-choice arguments — and less favorable to incumbent union protection — than the Biden-era board was. Whether the board will accept this challenge and actually overturn or narrow the blocking charge policy is uncertain, but the legal terrain is more hospitable than it has been in years.
The practical significance extends beyond GWU. If the NLRB accepts this argument and rules that the blocking charge policy conflicts with Section 9's mandatory language, it would affect decertification proceedings nationwide — and potentially dozens of pending cases where unions are currently using blocking charges to delay elections. Nursing is not the only sector watching this case, but hospital unions are among the most active users of blocking charges when decertification threats emerge.
The blocking charge policy has been around long enough that most nurses don't know it exists — and most unions want it that way. What GWU nurses are doing is unusual: they're using the legal system to challenge the legal mechanism that's being used against them. Whether it works depends on this NLRB board's appetite for limiting union procedural power. That appetite is higher now than it was three years ago.
One detail in the GWU filing is worth noting for nurses at other hospitals who may be in similar situations: Abraha was not given access to the ULP hearing or the specific charges DCNA filed. This is not unusual under current NLRB procedure — but it means nurses who signed the decertification petition have no way to evaluate whether the charges are substantive or tactical. The opacity of the process is part of what makes the blocking charge policy frustrating from a worker-rights standpoint, regardless of one's views on union representation generally.