On Aug. 20 and 21, the workers at a Houston plant owned by Lamons Gasket Co. will vote whether to retain United Steelworkers of America as their union. They tried to do this once before, only to have the federal National Labor Relations Board say they were not allowed.

In fact, the workers actually had a vote in 2010, but NLRB impounded the ballots before they could be counted. The board then in 2011 threw out the very NLRB precedent that allowed the workers’ vote, a 2007 ruling known as Dana Corp.