A judge in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on February 23 rejected the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) request for a nationwide cease-and-desist order against Starbucks, handing the company an important win against the overzealous agency’s ongoing case against it. Instead, the judge ruled that his order would be limited to one Starbucks store in Ann Arbor, MI, where an employee had been discharged for violating company policies.
The court’s action came one day after the same judge vacated a February 17 decision that had imposed a nationwide injunction. That injunction led to numerous headlines and dubious statements from the NLRB’s General Counsel and Detroit Regional Director touting their efforts to go after Starbucks. Given that the case is still working its way through the Board’s adjudication process, those statements appeared unusually biased to observers of labor policy, but given the court’s reversal, they seem to be somewhat outdated now too.
More importantly, the overly aggressive pursuit of a nationwide injunction underscores the perception that the NLRB has little interest in being a neutral arbiter of labor law and instead has adopted an activist stance when it comes to labor organizing. Employers in the agency’s crosshairs usually face expensive and often unnecessary litigation as a result.
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At issue in the Ann Arbor store is the discharge of one...
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