After engaging in one of the most brutal and most unlawful anti-union campaigns of recent decades, Starbucks has hit on a new tactic: it is claiming evidence of skullduggery at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in order to help pro-union workers win an election in Kansas City. As a result, the company is calling for mail-in certification elections at the company to be suspended with immediate effect.

In a letter to the NLRB, Starbucks says that Board agents in Kansas City favored pro-union workers in the election process and then colluded with the union, Workers United, to hide the evidence of malfeasance. In response, Workers United said the letter was simply Starbucks’s “latest attempt to manipulate the legal process for their own means and prevent workers from exercising their fundamental right to organize.” So far, the union has won over two hundred twenty NLRB elections in thirty-three states — many by overwhelming margins — and has lost only forty-six elections.

Starbucks is scraping the bottom of the barrel here — and forgot to mention its unlawful termination of three workers at the same location. The Board is accorded a lot of discretion to manage elections. It’s highly unlikely that the Board will find any substance in its complaint. So often with Starbucks, the complaint (or the appeal) is the point. It does not seem like a good issue for them; if there was something better they would use it, but this is the best they’ve got.