The US’s top labor lawyer has said her agency will not “succumb” to Amazon, Starbucks and SpaceX’s attempts to legally challenge the National Labor Relations Board and its ability to enforce federal labor law.
Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB general counsel, accused some of the US’s largest corporations of “jumping on the bandwagon” in mounting legal challenges to the labor watchdog, which has found itself at the center of the ongoing battle between the companies and a wave of unionizing efforts by workers.
Attorneys representing Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and Starbucks have all argued in recent months that the NLRB is “unconstitutional” and has overstepped its authority.
“There is no way, despite our very limited resources and board agents being overwhelmed with quite a number of cases … that we’re going to succumb to the pressures imposed in addressing these challenges and in defending the constitutionality of our agency structure,” Abruzzo said at a webinar event hosted by the Roosevelt Institute.
Abruzzo, who was appointed by Joe Biden in 2021, said the legal challenges against the NLRB had been launched in retaliation for the agency doing its job.
“These esoteric arguments came about why? Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers for speaking about their workplace concerns. And then Amazon jumps on the bandwagon, Starbucks jumps on the bandwagon, Trader Joe’s, others get in on the action just because we’re trying to hold them accountable for repeatedly violating workers rights to organize and collectively bargain through representatives of their free choosing.”
Read more here from the Guardian.
