Professor James Brudney, the Joseph Crowley Chair in Labor and Employment Law, was quoted in an article by Law360 that discusses Starbucks’ search for a new general counsel amid an explosive unionization campaign.
“I think one of the things about a general counsel in a company like Starbucks is that you’re going to have to be … quick on your feet and in your mind with a variety of regulatory regimes,” said James Brudney, a labor and employment professor at Fordham University School of Law.
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The company has argued in response to the petitions that bargaining units at individual stores are not appropriate and instead should cover an entire region. And there are complaints both in public statements and in formal charges with the National Labor Relations Board that accuse Starbucks of having district managers spending more time in unionizing shops and terminating union backers.
“This is a very competitive world, the world of buying individual cups of coffee. To the extent that Starbucks has established itself as the leading brand, it doesn’t want to lose that,” Brudney said. “It could lose at least some meaningful market share if [its clientele]perceive that … its mode of operation is to treat its workers badly.”
The coffee giant has only won elections in two stores. Given the thousands of Starbucks locations in the U.S., the general counsel over time likely will help develop parameters for the bargaining table — as in, the issues the company will negotiate to an agreement versus those it takes a harder line on, he says.
“It’s a question of whether you’re going to use the regulatory machinery to try and prolong or drag out disputes or whether you’re going to try to engage with your workforce if they actually want to be represented by a union,” Brudney said. “If they do want it, then you could cut through the legal process by saying, ‘OK, let’s sit down and negotiate.'”