BROOKFIELD TOWNSHIP, Ohio - The National Labor Relations Board has scheduled an election for truck drivers in Brookfield to decide whether to keep their union representation. 

On January 25 and 26, full-time truck drivers employed by Nick Strimbu Inc. will have the chance to vote on the decertification of their union, Teamsters Local 261. Decertification is a process by which employees formally drop a union as their exclusive bargaining representative. 

The process is initiated by a petition which must be signed by 30% or more of the employees in a bargaining unit. Once that petition is submitted to the NLRB, it schedules a secret-ballot election. If 50% of workers voting in the election decide to vote “No,” the union is decertified. 

Teamsters Local 261 leadership, as well as Nick Strimbu Inc. ownership and management, declined to comment for this story.

21 News obtained a letter sent to union members by George Whippo, the union’s business agent, in which Whippo said decertification “doesn’t fix problems — it removes workers’ only voice.” 

“Without a union, raises become discretionary, benefits can be reduced or frozen and favoritism replaces clear rules,” Whippo wrote in the letter. 

Jeff Howell, a Strimbu driver and union steward, said he believes his fellow workers will vote to keep the union. He is against decertification, and said dropping representation could impact workers’ wages, insurance and pension. 

“It provides a contract, a set of rules, if you will, that the employees and the employer have to play by,” Howell said in a video interview Tuesday. “As soon as the union goes away and those rules aren't in place, the company has free reign to change insurance at the drop of a hat, and then the employees have no bargaining power to say, ‘Hey, we don't want this. Why can't we have something better?’”

According to workers, Nick Strimbu Inc. has been encouraging drivers to end their union membership. Screenshots from an internal messaging system show Bill Strimbu, the company’s president, and Thomas Banks, its driver recruitment and retention manager, urging employees to vote “No” — and repeatedly asking them, “Who do you trust?”

The messages include claims from Banks that the Strimbu family has voluntarily provided wage increases and healthcare benefits beyond its obligations to the union contract over the years. Since June 2020, Banks said drivers have paid $479,920 in initiation fees and union dues. 

“This is your money from your paychecks,” Banks wrote. “What do you have to show for it?”

Despite those arguments, Nick Strimbu Inc. driver Kyle Anderson told 21 News Tuesday he plans to vote to keep his Teamsters membership. Anderson said drivers who take issue with the union should work to fix it, not get rid of it. 

“If you don't feel that the union is doing right by you, you have just as much a right as everybody else to come out here and talk to the union,” Anderson said. “It's a democratic process. Your voice can be heard.”