Starbucks union-buster is ironic winner after liberals push nuclear option

I found this while looking for info for this LBN post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014940287

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/starbucks_union_buster_is_ironic_winner_after_liberals_push_nuclear_option/

With GOP obstruction defeated, attorney who helped Starbucks get away with firing union activists headed to bench

FRIDAY, NOV 22, 2013 10:42 AM CST

JOSH EIDELSON



Barack Obama announces nominees to fill vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, June 4, 2013, including Patricia Ann Millett (R). (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)


When Senate Democrats curbed filibusters in a historic Thursday vote, unions were among the major winners. The D.C. Circuit Court, where Republican obstruction has maintained a conservative majority, has repeatedly rejected modest pro-labor moves by the National Labor Relations Board. And restricting filibusters on nominations could pave the way for future senators to rein in filibusters on legislation, which have bedeviled unions’ labor law reform efforts every time that Democrats controlled both Congress and the presidency. Unions have thus been at the forefront of recent efforts to secure filibuster reforms.

So it’s ironic that one of the most acute and immediate beneficiaries of those efforts will be Patricia Ann Millett, a woman who helped Starbucks stymie unions. Millett is one of three D.C. Circuit nominees tapped by President Obama and blocked by Republicans; after invoking the so-called nuclear option, the Senate voted 55-43 Thursday to move forward on Millett.

“I find it troubling, because Ms. Millett and her firm Akin Gump went well beyond what I consider the bounds of decency and morality in the very aggressive anti-union campaign they really designed and helped Starbucks carry out,” Daniel Gross, a founding member of the Starbucks Workers Union, told Salon. “The campaign that Ms. Millett and her firm architected and really co-led, and continues to co-lead with Starbucks, involved all of the scorched earth tactics which are starting to come to light more and more.” The White House, the AFL-CIO and Starbucks did not provide comment on Millett’s Starbucks work in response to Thursday inquiries. Akin Gump declined to comment.

After 11 years as an assistant to the solicitor general at the federal Department of Justice, Millett joined the top-flight firm Akin Gump, whose website describes its “Labor Relations Strategic Advice and Counseling” practice as including “union avoidance” and “the defense of unfair labor practice charges …” Millett’s clients there included the coffee giant Starbucks, which faced a union campaign by the Starbucks Workers Union, an affiliate of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the Wobblies).

FULL story at link.