Former
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, under threat
of subpoena, has finally appeared before the
United States Senate to answer for the
company’s union-busting practices.
Most
unionized Starbucks workers had never,
before the
recent Senate
hearing, heard Schultz try to defend how
Starbucks has gone about relating to
employees at the company’s near 300
unionized stores. And they didn’t like what
they would hear.
The
Schultz testimony, noted Gianna Reeve, a
22-year-old shift supervisor at a unionized
Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York,
gave Starbucks baristas “nothing new.”
Buffalo saw the first successful Starbucks
union vote in late 2021.
“His testimony and
continued denial of Starbucks’ illegal
activities is deplorable,” says Reeve.
“It’s even more frustrating to hear
Schultz feign unawareness about the labor
law that deems those activities illegal.”
Throughout
the Senate hearing, Schultz repeatedly
denied any wrongdoing. The National Labor
Relations Board — the independent federal
agency that protects the right to organize —
doesn’t share his perspective. The NLRB has
found that the national coffee chain has
violated federal labor law some 1,300 times
under Schultz’s watch.
Those
violations, the NLRB has held, include
illegally monitoring and firing organizers,
withholding benefits from unionized stores,
and closing a store that attempted to
organize.
“The Starbucks coffee
company unequivocally — and let me set the
tone for this very early on — has not
broken the law,” Schultz at one point in
the hearing insisted, a stance that
brought immediate laughter from the
gallery.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT),
the chair of the Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions Committee, reminded
Schultz numerous times that workers have a
constitutional right to organize. The
decision on whether or not to form a union,
the senator emphasized, belongs only to
workers, not billionaire CEOs.
“Over the past 18 months
Starbucks has waged the most aggressive
and illegal union-busting campaign in the
modern history of our country,” Sanders
noted. “The fundamental issue we are
facing today is whether we have a system
of justice that applies to all — or
whether billionaires and large
corporations can break the law with
impunity.”
Starbucks
workers at the hearing found the spectacle
of members of Congress grilling Schultz to
be highly satisfying, especially since
management and the union have spent only a
few minutes together in the over 400 days
since the first Starbucks store voted to
unionize.
Gianna
Reeve, the Buffalo Starbucks employee, noted
she had once attempted to hold Schultz
accountable by asking him to sign the Fair
Election Principles, a set of
standards assembled by
Starbucks Workers United that expects
management to commit itself to not
retaliating against workers organizing to
fight for a fair contract. Schultz’s
response?
“He ran out of the room,”
says Reeve.
“The work of baristas
across the country brought us to this
hearing moment,” she adds, “and it’s
gratifying to witness.”
Following
the hearing, Reeve once again attempted to
confront Schultz and get him to sign the
Fair Election Principles, a request he
ignored as aides escorted him away.
Starbucks
workers — the company calls them “partners”
— shared with the Senate committee how far
Starbucks management will often go to
interfere in union organizing.
Maggie
Smith, a single mom and Starbucks “partner”
from Knoxville, Tennessee, testified that
she felt motivated to form a union during
the height of the Covid pandemic in the fall
of 2021. The Knoxville store would soon
afterwards become the first unionized
Starbucks store in the South. But that
victory didn’t come without a fight.
Employees
at the Knoxville store found themselves
threatened by their store manager and
accused of being disloyal for wanting a
union. The company even fired one six-year
veteran of the company after she became
actively involved in the union organizing.
The NLRB has since found merit in the
multiple unfair labor practice charges the
union has filed and will pursue civil
prosecutions. The agency is also seeking to
reinstate, with back pay, the fired
Knoxville “partner.”
Smith
told the Senate panel she first realized how
little real meaning the Starbucks “partner”
label held when she saw first-hand how much
the company opposed the “true partnership”
with Starbucks that unionizing workers were
trying to organize.
“You can’t be,” Smith
explained, “pro-partner and anti-union.”
The
Senate testimony from the Knoxville
Starbucks workers offers just one example of
how Starbucks is attempting to bust
burgeoning union drives at Starbucks stores
across the country. But Schultz throughout
the hearing vehemently denied that Starbucks
has broken any law.
“I take offense with you
categorizing me or Starbucks as a union
buster when that is not true,” Schultz
told Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who had cited
the huge sums of money Starbucks had spent
retaining the services of the well-known
Littler Mendelson anti-union law firm.
That
Schultz response also drew laughter from
union supporters in the crowd.
The
Schultz era at Starbucks may now have ended,
but the Starbucks worker fight for fair
contracts remains far from over. The new
Starbucks CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, has
announced he plans to work a
half-day shift once a month at a Starbucks
outlet to stay close to customers and the
store culture. He’s remained mum on his
plans to negotiate with the union.
Starbucks workers have organized over
7,500 workers since December 2021, Buffalo’s
Gina Reeve told the Senate panel. Those
workers will be closely watching what course
the new Starbucks CEO decides to take.
“The power dynamics of
Starbucks need to be rebalanced,” she
observed, “and I hope to see CEO Laxman
Narasimhan take the opportunity to really
make a ‘different kind of company.’”