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Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) today called attention to the suspicious and potentially illegal union-busting tactics in Maine by multi-billion-dollar chains Chipotle and Starbucks. In a House Education and Labor Committee hearing on removing barriers to organizing, fellow New England Representative Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) raised Pingree’s concerns, asking former National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chair Mark Pearce for insight into how the NLRB can respond to these types of incidents. 

“Well, when you look at Maine, the insidious nature of the Maine situation is you have a place that gets closed as soon as a petition gets, gets filed after employees were being trained to expand operations at that facility and then they offer up jobs to the public at a location 40 minutes away, but block the emails of those employees that were working at the closed facilities from applying. That kind of devastating, devastating, diabolical activity has to be looked at very carefully,” said Pearce, who is a visiting professor and the executive director of the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. “The law talks about an employer has a right to shutter its business to stop a union from coming in. But if you have a corporate employer that has a cluster of business and is essentially playing whack a mole to drive out the union, I think the law looks a little bit differently at those kind of activities. And it'll be interesting to see what the unfair labor practice will result.”

In June, Chipotle in Augusta became the first store to file a petition with the NLRB seeking representation; less than a month later, Chipotle abruptly announced that it was closing the store. Pingree condemned these potentially illegal union-busting tactics and called for the NLRB to investigate. 

In 2021, Pingree cosponsored and helped the House pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, the most comprehensive pro-labor legislation in decades. 

Today’s Education and Labor Committee hearing can be streamed here. 

Courtney and Pearce’s exchange during the hearing can be watched here, and a transcript is copied below:

Congressman Joe Courtney:

I actually got a text from Congresswoman Pingree, who, again was indicating that up in Maine–again, another successful Starbucks organizing drive–and the business immediately, dramatically cut the store hours. There's a Chipotle is also another chain that again is seeing this same phenomenon of people who just basically have been fed up and who, you know, really on their own – they were not sort of driven by external forces coming in, also organized in Chellie’s district. And again, the location was closed immediately. So, you know, Mr. Pearce, obviously you, you know, have covered a lot of miles in this in this area, you know, these sort of retaliatory measures or certainly, you know, apparent retaliatory measures... you know, what's, what's ... how do we respond to this?

I mean, obviously, we passed the PRO Act here in the House. But in terms of just sort of what were the tools that the NLRB has maybe just sort of comment in terms of just your what you're seeing with incidents like in Connecticut and in Maine?

Mark Pearce:

Well, when you look at Maine, the insidious nature of the Maine situation is you have a place that gets closed as soon as a petition gets, gets filed after employees were being trained to expand operations at that facility and then they offer up jobs to the public at a location 40 minutes away, but block the emails of those e­mployees that were working at the closed facilities from applying. That kind of devastating, devastating, diabolical activity has to be looked at very carefully.

The law talks about an employer has a right to shutter its business to stop a union from coming in. But if you have a corporate employer that has a cluster of business and is essentially playing whack a mole to drive out the union, I think the law looks a little bit differently at those kind of activities. And it'll be interesting to see what the unfair labor practice will result.

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