# Union election petitions fell 15% in 2025 and have not recovered in 2026

Published 2026-11-07 · By Pushbuild · Data: [NLRB Cases API – Unfair Labor Charges & Union Elections](https://pushbuild.com/apis/nlrb-cases.html)

**15%**Union election petitions fell · as of 2026-11-07

**Workers and unions filed 1,583 petitions for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board from January to September 2025, down from 1,857 in the same months of 2024.** The same months of 2026 brought 1,587, level with 2025 and still below 2022, 2023 and 2024.

“Elections to certify or decertify a union as the bargaining representative of a unit of employees are decided by a majority of votes cast.”

— [NLRB, Conduct Elections](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections)

| January to September | Union election petitions (RC) | Decertification petitions (RD) | RC closed: union certified | RC closed: union lost | Union win rate, closed cases |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2022 | 1,685 | 242 | 930 | 328 | 73.9% |
| 2023 | 1,642 | 237 | 919 | 269 | 77.4% |
| 2024 | 1,857 | 248 | 1011 | 346 | 74.5% |
| 2025 | 1,583 | 224 | 806 | 292 | 73.4% |
| 2026 | 1,587 | 224 | 715 | 283 | 71.6% |

Unions won 73.4% of the 2025 petitions that ended in a certified result, against 77.4% for 2023 petitions. Decertification petitions, filed to remove a union, slipped from 248 to 224.

## Caveats

Counts are NLRB case filings by filing date, as of November 7, 2026. January to September is compared because the data has no filings at all for October 2025, a gap being checked with the source. Win rates count only petitions closed with a certification of representative (union won) or a certification of results (union lost); withdrawn and dismissed petitions are excluded, and many 2026 petitions are still open, so the 2026 rate will move.

## Sources

- [NLRB, Conduct Elections](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections), read through the Pushbuild [NLRB Cases API](https://pushbuild.com/apis/nlrb-cases.html) on 2026-11-07

Data as of 2026-11-07. Every figure in this post is in the table above and the CSV below.

Download the data behind this post: [b7-nlrb-petitions-jan-sep.csv](https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/data/b7-nlrb-petitions-jan-sep.csv)

## Get this data

Every number in this post comes from the [NLRB Cases API – Unfair Labor Charges & Union Elections](https://pushbuild.com/apis/nlrb-cases.html). $0.0016 per row returned; every key gets $1 of free usage each month.

```
curl -X POST https://api.pushbuild.com/nlrb-cases/run \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"maxItems": 20}'
```

[API docs and key](https://pushbuild.com/apis/nlrb-cases.html)[More analysis from this data](https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/api/nlrb-cases/)Embed this chart

Free to reuse with the credit link. Paste this HTML into your page, or use the [SVG file](https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/union-election-petitions-decline-2025-2026/chart.svg).

Want a table like this in Google Sheets, refreshed on demand? Free script: [copy a web table into Google Sheets](https://pushbuild.com/free/scripts/website-table-to-sheets/).

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As of 2026-11-07. Source: https://pushbuild.com/apis/analysis/union-election-petitions-decline-2025-2026/