It remains uncertain whether the nation’s thousands of rail workers will ratify the tentative agreement their unions negotiated after marathon sessions orchestrated by the Biden administration last month. While nearly half the workers have approved the agreements, the two largest rail unions head to the polls this week. And an opposition movement has taken shape that appears to resonate with many of the disaffected workers, who would be statutorily unleashed to strike should they reject the agreement. Analysts forecast that such strike could reverberate widely, disrupting the national economy and intensifying existing supply chain pressures. Key lawmakers have indicated that they are eyeing moves to forestall such an outcome, either extending the “cooling-off” period during which rail workers are statutorily barred from striking or, the more aggressive approach, codifying the TA, thereby imposing it on the workers.

In a piece published yesterday, major management law firm Littler Mendelson explores the implications of the midterm elections for national labor and employment policy. In the House, the firm previews, labor and employment issues may emerge as a centerpiece of the incoming GOP majority’s agenda. The piece highlights several of the party’s antilabor legislative priorities: the Employee Rights Act, the Ensuring Workers Get PAID Act, the Working Families Flexibility Act, among others. These bills would undermine organized labor and depress working standards in a variety of ways. They would more deeply entrench secret ballot elections, mandate recertification votes, require employee authorization of union’s political spending, permit employers to purport to self-report wage and hour violations, and dilute overtime protections.

In the latest Starbucks news, the coffee giant reportedly plans to shutter a store in Portland, Oregon next month, at which a unit of employees voted to unionize several weeks ago. The move, while demoralizing, is hardly surprising. As I observed earlier this month, the NLRB recently issued a major complaint alleging that, among other things, Starbucks unlawfully retaliated against its employees’ protected activity by discriminatorily closing several stores in New York.

In related local news, the owners of Darwin’s, a popular coffee shop in Cambridge, announced that they intend to close all locations in the city. The news has unsettling unionbusting overtones in light of the ongoing organizing efforts unfolding at the stores. In an email to the Boston Globe, in fact, one of the owners candidly concedes that union activity accelerated their decision to discontinue operations. While a partial retaliatory closure violates federal labor law, the Supreme Court has held that the NLRA does not preclude an employer from entirely shuttering operations — even for explicitly antiunion purposes. Still, the law requires that the Darwins bargain over the effects of the closure, which they have expressed a commitment to do.