Workers at the Apple store in Towson, Maryland, won national attention and praise from President Joe Biden after becoming the first of the tech giant’s U.S. employees to unionize. Less than two months earlier, Starbucks baristas in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood became the first of the coffee chain’s Maryland employees to organize.
Now comes the hard part. While the workers are among those leading what union organizers see as a resurgence in the labor movement, most of these campaigns are in the early stages and labor experts warn that employees face difficulty ahead in a process tilted heavily in favor of employers.
“Labor law is not meant to facilitate the labor movement,” said Michael C. Duff, a law professor at the University of Wyoming College of Law and former government labor litigator with the National Labor Relations Board. “There are lots of defenses that employers have available to them.”
