Littler Cashes in on Starbucks’ Sprawling Anti-Union Campaign

Starbucks Corp.’s fight to repel a unionizing campaign at coffee shops across the country has turned into a goldmine for the massive law firm on the front line.

Littler Mendelson has staffed at least 110 attorneys, including more than 50 partners, to advocate for the world’s largest coffee chain on union-related cases since late 2021, according to a Bloomberg Law review of dockets.

It’s not clear how much Starbucks is paying the firm, whose equity partners raked in $560,000 in profits on average last year. But the sheer volume of outside lawyers underscores the enormous amount of legal work generated by the company’s push to stymie worker organizing, so far with mixed results.

“All of this is unprecedented,” Matthew Bodie, a former National Labor Relations Board attorney who teaches at the University of Minnesota, said of the volume of Starbucks work at the agency. “It’s hard for me to wrap my brain around it, and it seems to just keep coming.”

Starbucks is using its deep pockets—the company’s revenue exceeded $32 billion in fiscal year 2022—to pay an army of lawyers to fight off the union and defend against a slew of allegations that it’s violated federal labor law.

Most of the action involves the NLRB, the federal agency that processes union election petitions, holds votes, and certifies results. Its legal arm—which has taken a sharp turn in favor of unions under the leadership of General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo—investigates allegations of unfair labor practices, issues complaints, and litigates cases before administrative law judges, the board, and federal courts.

Starbucks Workers United has won 330 of the 408 elections tallied as of mid-June, though the union hasn’t reached a single collective bargaining agreement with the company. Starbucks has insisted on negotiating contracts on a store-by-store basis.

Starbucks, through spokesman Andrew Trull, declined to comment. The company has previously denied violating the law and pledged its commitment to respecting its workers’ choices on unionization, while saying it doesn’t want to deal with unions.

Former CEO Howard Schultz told a Senate panel in March that the company prefers to have a “direct relationship” with its employees.

Coast-to-Coast

Starbucks has been hit with more than 550 unfair labor practice charges, in which workers, unions, or others accuse the company of violating federal law. Regional NLRB officials have found merit in about 350 of those charges, leading them to issue 100 separate complaints against the company.

Administrative law judges have ruled that the coffee giant committed unfair labor practices in 17 of the 18 decisions issued to date. The NLRB has ruled against Starbucks in the three cases it’s considered, with many more on the way.

Starbucks, meanwhile, has countered with 100 charges against the union, mostly claiming refusal to bargain. NLRB prosecutors haven’t issued any complaints based on those charges.

Starbucks has taken a pugilistic approach towards the NLRB, accusing it of secretly colluding with Starbucks Workers United. The company said in a recent proxy statement that the agency’s behavior has been “highly biased and inappropriate” and that Abruzzo “is pursuing the company as though the federal agency were an agent of the union.”

The company is also jousting with the NLRB in federal court, where agency officials have filed a handful of petitions for temporary injunctions to halt alleged unfair labor practices while underlying disputes move forward at the administrative level.

As a large international company, Starbucks relies on a host of law firms, including Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton; Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart; and Goldberg Segalla, according to Bloomberg Law litigation analytics.

But Littler is Starbucks’ go-to law firm for its NLRB work.

The coffee chain has come to depend on Littler’s extensive network of offices across the country to drive its coast-to-coast anti-union campaign. Lawyers from more than 35 of the firm’s nearly 60 outposts in the US have worked on union-related Starbucks cases.

“Littler is one of the few law firms in the country that have the number of attorneys available to work on a campaign like this,” said John Logan, a labor studies professor at San Francisco State University.

Some of firm’s staffing on Starbucks cases appears to be regional. Cases arising in the Pacific Northwest, for example, often list Seattle office head Ryan Hammond and associate Alyson Dieckman as employer counsel.

But expertise and availability seem to play a factor, as well. Littler lawyers from five different offices—located in three different time zones—have appeared in a major unfair labor practice case out of Seattle.

Veterans Arthur Carter and Maury Baskin, who helped businesses successfully fight a wide range of pro-worker initiatives during the Obama administration, are representing Starbucks in NLRB cases in federal appellate courts. Columbus, Ohio-based partner David Kadela has played a key role developing Starbucks’ aggressive strategy for defending against agency petitions for federal court injunctions.

“We appreciate the trust Starbucks has placed in our team,” Littler said in a statement, declining to speak further about its work for the company.

‘Hard-Nosed Advocates’

Littler is among a small contingent of national law firms that focus exclusively on advising companies in labor and employment matters. Founded in 1942 in the Bay Area, the firm touts its “union avoidance” skills on its website and has built a reputation as a firm of choice for big employers on labor matters.

It’s a reputation that’s developed over many decades.

“There is no question that we are retained by clients who wish to resist union organizing,” name partner Arthur Mendelson told the San Francisco Examiner in 1980. “That is part of our practice. The unions object because we are effective.”

The firm has grown from some 60 lawyers in 1980 to more than 1,000 lawyers, spanning 58 US offices. Big brands like Walmart Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Apple Inc. turn to it for union-related issues and other employment disputes.

“They have a reputation of being hard-nosed advocates on behalf of employers,” said Roger King, counsel to HR Policy Association and a former Jones Day partner. “Littler Mendelson is unfairly criticized for that. A union has every right to organize; the employer has every right to state its position.”

That aggressiveness appears to be a good match for Starbucks’ expansive anti-union campaign, as the company hasn’t shied away from litigation. For example, it argued that workers from multiple stores should vote as one unit rather than each store getting its own election—and didn’t stop until that argument had been shot down in more than 40 cases.

Littler alums also have scored in-house positions at the companies the firm represents. James Zissler, the firm’s former Seattle office leader, is now corporate counsel for labor and employment at Starbucks.

For Starbucks, the investment in Littler’s expertise to guide and execute its anti-union campaign sounds like “rational and basic operational execution,” Adam Smith Esq. legal consultants Bruce Macewen and Janet Stanton said.

The coffee giant, like many other large companies, doesn’t want a unionized workforce, they said in an email. “So they have hired the no. 1 L&E law firm in the country to assist them.”