I know that a group of workers can legally vote for a union in their workplace. But what if we didn’t want it. Could we vote it out??
You should talk to your employer, I have a feeling they would be more than willing to help you with that. 
Be careful what you wish for though - people fought and died for the right to unionize. It may the case that you won’t know what you’ve got 'till it’s gone.
Bullpucky. Unions are no longer worth spit.
Labor board now regulates hours worked, pay, and more or less employees rights vs management. All the main things unions fought for are now done by a different governing body. They have no purpose at all. Eliminating them would do nothing except make a few fat cats actually work for a living.
Having been a forced union member, where the union took my money and did jack shite for me other than inconvenience me I would be pretty damn happy to see them eliminated. Nothing against most rank and file, other than
WHY THE FUCK DOES SOMEONE THINK RUNNING ONE SET OF WIRES THROUGH A GROMMET AND USING 4 FASTENERS IS WORTH $24/HOUR!
Yup, I once dated a guy that back in the late 70s made $24 an hour doing one 4 minute job on an auto line making double what I am currently making. The pitiful thing is that an illiterate one handed 12year old kid could do the same job. Shit, there are university professors that dont make that kind of money.
[but then again I also think that sports ‘celebrites’ and top executives making untold millions of dollars is obscene also.]
From the point of view of rational economics then, all college professors should resign and get jobs in factories. And yet they don’t. Could it be that there is something esides salary that makes their positions valuable to them? Valuable enough to not get that oh-so-cushy factory job?
To answer your question directly, rather than engage in the usual exhausting and pointless debate about unions…
…I t depends where you live, and if you could tell us what jurisdiction you’re in that would help, but in most jurisdictions it is possible for a union to decertify itself by vote of the members. It isn’t usually an easy process, but it can usually be done.
Heh. Go on strike against your union.
I’ll be thinking of that phrase for most of the morning now.
I have a family member who pays substantial union dues, just lost her health benefits at her job and is paid the prevailing industry standard wage, this WITH substantial seniority in the company.
She would kill to be able to not pay her dues… in fact, she’d probably be happier burning the money in her barbecue pit than giving it to a wholly ineffective union.
Obviously someone that is totally ignorant of what a union does. I will leave it at that, any further discussion should be directed to the BBQ Pit.
As far as decertifying a union, the employees can get together and contact the National Labor Relations Board, that is the arm of the federal government that controls labor unions. They have folks there will assist in the decertification process, depending on the union things can get rather nasty.
[Moderator notes]
It would be nice if people could give answers to the OP without extraneous opinions. I know it’s difficult, but stifle yourselves.
samclem GQ moderator
Forgive me if I’m ignorant of real-world union politics (I’m not and never have been a union member, just the way my profession is), but if the members don’t feel the union’s top brass does anything for them, why not vote to replace the leaders rather than ditch the whole union?
Oh, you’re no fun. Especially when you’re right. 
The place to start with something like this is probably with a lawyer. I’m not a lawyer. But I do know that here in the USA, the National Labor Relations Board exists. The rules regarding certification and decertification are in Part 102, subpart C of the NLRB rules manual. They make the rules, because Congress said they do, in 29 USC 153. There may be state or even local dimensions to the actual petitioning and voting. But yes, here in the USA, workers can reject representation by a labor union just as they can accept representation by one.
Sorry about the extraneousness, Mr Clem.
Perhaps what I mean is that we are paying the WRONG people the leet salaries.
Perhaps if we paid teachers then we would get more people actually working as teachers because they want to and can afford to instead of working in industry because they have to earn a decent wage. I dont know how it is now, but most teachers I knew back in the 70s when I was in school had second jobs to make ends meet, and most of them had spouses that worked also. I made more in my third year as a machinist at the age of 20 than my favorite high school teacher with tenure did.
Er. I’m sure it depends on the specifics, but it makes sense that the one strategy would be to vote for union reps that more nearly represent the people they’re supposed to be representing. Might not work really well if the local shop is part of a large national union, I speculate, a large union with a national agenda.
Seems to me that another strategy, rather than voting out a union entirely, would be to vote to establish a small local union. Sure, there would be tradeoffs.
Nope, I ain’t a lawyer, nor any other kind of expert in these things.
Depends on the situation. For example, I belong to a large union representing one bargaining unit of state workers. People in my agency don’t feel the union represents us well, and have started the process to try to get out of this bargaining unit and union. The workers in my agency are less than 2% of the members. In my opinion, a large part of the reason the union doesn’t represent us well is because we are such a small part of the unit, and our interests are subordinate to those of the larger membership. Changing the leadership won’t change this.