The Supreme Court sided with Starbucks on Thursday in a decision that could make it harder for labor prosecutors to win court injunctions against employers they believe to have broken the law.
The case, McKinney v. Starbucks, revolved around the firings of seven baristas amid a union organizing campaign at a store in Memphis, Tennessee. The National Labor Relations Board . She instructed offices to investigate alleged threats as soon as possible to figure out whether an injunction might be called for.
“I think this is sort of part of a larger movement by the court… They are looking at agency deference with a jaundiced eye.”
– Patrick Muldowney, attorney
Advertisement
In an interview with HuffPost following oral arguments in the Starbucks case, Abruzzo called the injunctions “one of the most important tools available to us.” She noted that workers who’ve been fired for organizing don’t have a private right of action to sue the employer for damages — their only tool for rectifying injustice is the labor board.
“We are it for workers, and we’ve got to aggressively pursue section 10(j) relief in appropriate cases,” Abruzzo told HuffPost, referring to the law that allows the NLRB to seek injunctions. “It’s a very painstaking review… . We don’t do it lightly, but we do need to do it in certain cases.”
The board’s pursuit of injunctions is indeed rare, according to agency data. The NLRB has only litigated a total of 135 injunction cases since 2012, or less than a dozen a year on average. The board has succeeded in winning an injunction 74% of the time, and happens to have done better under the more stringent test in court than the more lax one.
But Muldowney said it was hard to see Abruzzo expanding the use of injunctions if the bar is set higher.
“I think the idea is if the court comes down in favor of Starbucks you won’t see an acceleration in terms of [injunctions],” he said.
Advertisement
Starbucks isn’t the only company to challenge the way the board operates. SpaceX, the aerospace company owned by Elon Musk, has filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the NLRB’s structure itself is unconstitutional, and therefore the agency’s union-busting charges against SpaceX are illegitimate. If the company were to succeed, the case could upend labor relations.
Abruzzo vowed that none of these cases would deter the board from enforcing the law.
“We’re not going to stop our investigations or our litigation or [union] elections because of these challenges,” Abruzzo said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
