Labor News & Commentary January 28, 2024 New York pension system is pressuring Starbucks over its anti-union efforts

https://onlabor.org/january-28-2024/

By Swap Agrawal

Swap Agrawal is a student at Harvard Law School.

In this weekend’s news and commentary, Trader Joe’s argues that the NLRB is unconstitutional, and the New York pension system is pressuring Starbucks over its anti-union efforts amid the company’s proxy fight with SOC.

On January 26, Bloomberg News reported that Trader Joe’s argued in a January 16 NLRB Region 1 hearing that the NLRB is unconstitutional. Christopher Murphy of the law firm Morgan Lewis argued on behalf of Trader Joe’s that “[t]he National Labor Relations Act as interpreted and/or applied in this matter, including but not limited to the structure and organization of the National Labor Relations Board and the agency’s administrative law judges, is unconstitutional.” Murphy said the grocery chain was raising this as an “affirmative defense.” Administrative Law Judge Charles Muhl replied, “I’m certainly not going to be ruling on my own constitutionality anytime soon. So you’ll have to take that up with the board and the federal courts.”

Trader Joe’s strategy mirrors that of SpaceX. As Greg reported earlier this month, Elon Musk’s rocket company argued in federal court that the National Labor Relations Board’s in-house courts are unconstitutional and the agency should be prohibited from taking enforcement actions against it. Specifically, SpaceX relied on a case pending before the Supreme Court, Jarkesy v. SEC, to argue that agency tribunals infringe on the constitutional right to a jury trial in civil cases and NLRB administrative law judges violate the constitution’s separation of powers. “This is really dangerous,” said Seth Goldstein, an attorney for Trader Joe’s United. “Are we really going back to 1920?”

FULL story at link above.