Starbucks
CEO
Howard Schultz, in a recent interview with
CNN’s
Poppy Harlow, proudly showed off
his newest invention: a tablespoon
of olive oil added to a cup of
coffee to bring out rich, complex
flavors. The conversation took
place in Italy and was meant to
showcase Schultz’s commitment to
the innovation and quality of
Starbucks coffee as he gets ready
to step down as CEO of the company
for the third time.
When
Harlow
asked him why he was in Italy
doing interviews rather than
sitting down with representatives
from Starbucks
Workers
United (SWU) to
negotiate
a
contract,
he responded,
“We want to and are willing to
enter into bargaining, but we want
to do it face to face. That’s what
we think is the right thing to
do.”
Schultz
was
referring to the fact that
negotiating meetings were taking
place virtually over Zoom—the way
that most meetings took place
during the height of the COVID-19
pandemic, and the way that many
continue to be conducted. The
union sees his demand for
in-person meetings as an excuse to
delay negotiations. According to Axios’s Emily
Peck,
the issue could end up being
decided by a court. However, she
pointed out, “Arbitration is often
done virtually, as are court
hearings. It would be unusual for
a court to prohibit this at the
bargaining table.”
Indeed,
Schultz has been playing dirty during his
latest tenure as CEO, operating as
union-buster-in-chief of the iconic
corporation while trying to paint himself
as a sympathetic character.
Harlow’s
interview with
Schultz
began in Sicily and ended in
Brooklyn, New York, at the public
housing project where he grew
up—an obvious juxtaposition
intended to showcase how the CEO
of one of the most well-known
American brands knows what it’s
like to struggle in a
working-class environment. CNN’s
camera remained trained on
Schultz’s face as he pointed out
the stairwell in which he would
hide from an abusive father. “I
could almost cry, actually,” he
said.
This
sort
of sympathetic profiling of
self-made billionaires—Schultz
is
worth $3.7 billion—is
intentional.
The implied narrative is that if
someone from a low-income
background who faced abuse at the
hands of a parent could turn into
a successful billionaire, surely
Starbucks’s young,
educated
workers could
improve
their circumstances on their own.
In
fact,
in Schultz’s worldview, hardship
was the impetus for his success.
“I never would have had the drive
to do what I’ve done and have the
success I’ve enjoyed if I didn’t
come from this place,” he said.
There is, once again, an implied
narrative: hardship builds
character, and Starbucks workers
ought to be grateful for the
chance to struggle.
But
workers,
rightly, think they deserve
better. Since the first group of
Starbucks workers unionized a
café
in
Buffalo,
New York, in late 2021, more than
278 stores have done the same,
according to SWU.
Still, the number of unionized
cafés remains a tiny
fraction—about 3 percent—of all
stores.
Apparently,
Schultz
takes even this tiny trend personally,
as if Starbucks’s failure to keep
workers happy was a design flaw
rather than an inherent
characteristic of corporate
America. He addressed workers
early on in the union campaign and
said that the company had failed
to give them the tools they
needed, such as better staffing
and training, according to a New
York Times report.
Schultz admitted to
Harlow
that he returned to Starbucks as
CEO in April 2022 directly in
response to the wave of union
activity at cafés across the
United States.
But
instead of responding to workers,
Schultz’s strategy was to create an uneven
playing field and punish workers for
daring to demand better conditions.
In
2022,
Schultz reportedly rewarded
nonunion
workers with better wages
and benefits,
as well as credit
card
tipping,
and denied the same to people
working in union stores. As a
result, the New York Times reported,
“Filings for union elections
dropped from more than 60 a month
in March and April to under 10 in
August.”
In other
words, the drive to unionize worked to
improve conditions—at least for some
workers. But Schultz’s petty punishment
also worked to slow down the union’s
momentum.
Starbucks’s
retaliation
against workers has gone further
than uneven benefits. The company
is firing
union
leaders such
as
Starbucks worker Hannah Whitbeck
in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her
termination prompted a lawsuit and
a federal judge’s decision that,
initially, prohibited Starbucks
from firing workers for union
activity nationwide. Shortly
afterward, the judge in question,
in a remarkable move, retroactively
limited
his ruling to
just
the one store where Whitbeck
worked rather than applying it to
all Starbucks stores nationwide.
The
company
has also been understaffing stores
that
are unionizing, a move that the
union says is a deliberate ploy to
make workers’ lives more
difficult.
Schultz
has
also been closing down entire
stores that have dared to take up
union activity, including the first
store
in Seattle to unionize (Seattle
is
the city where Starbucks was
founded). The company is citing
“safety issues,” but SWU sees it
as clearly retaliatory. “This is
just the beginning. There are
going to be many more,” warned
Schultz in
July
2022.
Schultz
is
proving workers’ point. As long as
an employer can abuse workers as
Starbucks is doing, there is a
need for unions. And union
activity is surging, with a 50
percent
increase in strike activity in
2022
compared to the year before,
according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
The
CEO
sees himself as above the law. He
refused to testify about his
company’s 75 documented violations
of federal labor laws in front of
the Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions Committee,
chaired by Senator
Bernie
Sanders.
Sanders responded to the refusal
with a pithy observation:
“Apparently, it is easier for Mr.
Schultz to fire workers who are
exercising their constitutional
right to form unions, and to
intimidate others who may be
interested in joining a union than
to answer questions from elected
officials.”
Sanders
has
now hinted that
he
may subpoena Schultz.
Indeed,
companies like Starbucks won’t voluntarily
treat workers well. They have to be forced
into doing so, and unions are a powerful
way for workers to stand firm against
abusive CEOs like Schultz.
There
are
lessons for workers and
corporations in the recent union
negotiation between Japanese
automaker Toyota and
the
union representing Toyota workers.
The union asked for its largest
pay hike in 20 years. Remarkably,
the company agreed to all the
union’s demands in the very first
round of negotiations.
Toyota’s
head Koji Sato said the move was intended
as an example “for the industry as a
whole,” and that it reflected his “hope
that it will lead to frank discussions
between labor and management at each
company.” It worked. Hours after Toyota’s
announcement, Honda accepted its workers’
union’s demands in full.
Schultz
has
ruined Starbucks’s reputation as a
company that cares about its
workers and become the poster
child, even
in
the business world,
of what not to do when faced with
union activity.
Instead
of
fighting the union tooth and nail,
Schultz could take a page out of
Toyota’s book and embrace worker
demands. In his CNN
interview,
he admitted that what Starbucks
workers want more than anything is
“a seat at the table.”
He
also
said,
“It’s hard to walk in someone
else’s shoes, but you’ve got to do
that a little bit.” Instead of
experimenting with olive oil in
coffee, he could try something
else that’s new for him—treating
workers with the same respect that
he commands.
This
commentary was
produced
by Economy
for
All,
a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
