With less than one month to go until the May primary, things are starting to heat up in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District.
This past week, a labor leader called out Ryan Crosswell’s previous employment at Littler Mendelson, one of the country’s largest union-avoidance law firms.
Crosswell spent three years working at the firm before joining the US Department of Justice in 2014, and his campaign maintained that he never worked on anti-union activities.
Littler Mendelson has worked with Apple, McDonalds, Starbucks, REI, Trader Joes, and other large retailers to stifle unionization efforts.
John Logan, a labor history professor at San Francisco State University and an expert on the union-avoidance industry, explains how Littler Mendelson’s reputation was established decades ago.
“Littler, for decades, has been the most notorious union-avoidance law company in the country, without question, since the 1970s or 1980s,” Logan said in an interview.
He added, ”on the one hand, you could have someone who worked for Littler who said ‘I was never involved in the work that they did fighting unions’ and that could be true, but on the other hand, there’s no question whatsoever about the reputation of Littler in this area.”
