Hello, and welcome to 10 blocks. I'm Jordan McGillis, economics editor of City Journal.

Our topic today is a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, against Starbucks.

On September 13th, the NLRB ruled that Starbucks violated the National Labor Relations Act by, quote,

permanently closing its two remaining stores in

Ithaca, New York, for anti-union reasons. And that ruling was delivered by Judge Jeffrey Carter.

To discuss this matter, I've invited under the show the Manhattan Institute's Director of

Constitutional Studies, Ilya Shapiro. Ilya, thanks for hopping on. Great to be with you.

Okay, before we get into the weeds of administrative law, I got to ask, what's your

go-to Starbucks drink?

You a pumpkin spice latte guy?

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

I make my own coffee at home.

I'm rarely going to Starbucks.

And I take my coffee in black, so I'll just, if I happen to be at a

Starbucks or other cafe, I'll just take the Pike Place or whatever the darkest roast is black.

Okay. So it sounds like you're predisposed against Starbucks, perhaps, here, which represents a more

balanced discussion. All right. Can you explain how we got here? How can an obscure

agency order a business to reopen stores? Well, it's not obscure. The National Labor Relations

Board is one of the most powerful agencies in Washington. Certainly, you know, it's the, it's the labor department's attack dog, although it's

technically independent from the labor department per se. There have been fights over Starbucks

unionization, and the allegation was that Starbucks closed these two, and I think some other stores, as

retaliation or as hardball tactics to prevent the workers or to intimidate them from unionization.

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