Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

Late last week, the National Labor Relations Board (“Board” or “NLRB”) issued a decision in Siren Retail Corp. d/b/a Starbucks, 373 NLRB No. 135 (2024), which overruled the nearly 40-year-old decision in Tri-Cast, Inc., 274 NLRB 377 (1985).

On June 13, 2024, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Starbucks v. McKinney and, in doing so, clarified the standard applicable to the National Labor Relations Board’s (the “Board”) requests for preliminary injunctions under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”).

On January 31, 2024, an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) for the National Labor Relations Board (the “NLRB” or the “Board”) found that Starbucks Corporation (“Starbucks”) violated federal labor law when certain of its managers asked employees whether they would be working their scheduled shifts or otherwise wanted to be scheduled for shifts during a planned strike that was communicated to management. Employers should take notice of the roadmap this decision provides to avoid similar pitfalls.