Image Comics Union Says Management Fought to Invalidate Votes in Historic Election

Although the workers of Image Comics have won their election and are now unionized, they say that management has blocked three of 10 eligible workers from having their votes counted.

When the Image Comics workers initially announced that they were unionizing last year, they said that they had a supermajority of votes. Because an election would be redundant, they asked Image Comics to voluntarily recognize the union. Image Comics management refused to do so, forcing the 12 union-eligible workers to take a vote.

“Image Comics declined to grant that voluntary recognition and forced an NLRB election, which the CBWU won with all 10 public members voting YES,” Comic Book Workers Unite, the Image Comics union, told Motherboard. “This result has been confused by the current vote tally of 7-2, due to a frivolous supervisory challenge of three CBWU members by Image Comics.”

Although Image Comics challenged three of the ballots, the union election was still successful.

“CBWU and [Communications Workers of America] are continuing to request Image Comics drop their challenge to those three employees,” CBWU said, “so that their YES votes can be counted towards the supermajority which the CBWU already has, and which resulted in our overwhelming victory.”

What exactly Image Comics’ objection to the workers voting in the election was is unclear, as the publisher did not immediately respond to a request for comment.