Sonali Kolhatkar: Starbucks CEO Schultz -- union buster in chief
Starbucks workers protesting in Seattle, where the company is based.
—Photo by elliotstoller
Starbucks was named after Starbuck, the thoughtful Nantucket Quaker who was the first mate on the whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
From OtherWords.org
Outgoing Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, in a recent interview with CNN, 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 was meant to showcase Schultz’s commitment to Starbucks coffee as he prepared to step down as CEO of the company for the third time. But it took place in Italy, prompting his interviewer to ask: Why wasn’t Schultz sitting down with unionizing workers back home?
Indeed, Schultz — who is worth some $3.7 billion — has been operating as union-buster-in-chief of the iconic corporation.
Since the first group of Starbucks workers unionized a café in Buffalo in late 2021, more than 278 stores have done the same, according to Starbucks Workers United. Still, the number of unionized cafés remains a tiny fraction — about 3 percent — of all stores.
Early on, Schultz admitted to workers that the company had failed to give them the tools they needed, such as better staffing and training. But Schultz’s response 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.”
Meanwhile, 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 prohibited the Ann Arbor store from firing workers for union activity.
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 even closed entire stores that have dared to take up union activity, including the first store in Seattle to unionize.
“This is just the beginning. There are going to be many more,” warned Schultz in July 2022.
As long as an employer can abuse workers, there is a need for unions. And union activity is surging, with a 50 percent increase in strike activity last year compared to the year before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shultz apparently 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, until Sanders forced him to with a subpoena.
But not every company is fighting its own workers tooth and nail. When Toyota workers in Japan asked for the largest pay hike in 20 years, the automaker 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.” It worked. Hours after Toyota’s announcement, Honda accepted its own union’s demands in full.
No so for Starbucks. Schultz has ruined the company’s reputation for caring about its workers and become the poster child, even in the business world, of what not to do when faced with union activity.
Starbucks should take a page out of Toyota’s book. In his CNN interview, even Schultz admitted that what Starbucks workers want more than anything is “a seat at the table.” He added, “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.
Sonali Kolhatkar is the host of Rising Up With Sonali, a television and radio show on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.
Joyce Rowley: Plastic bags on way out of Mass.?
By JOYCE ROWLEY/ecoRI News contributor
Six years ago, the city of Somerville passed one of the first ordinances in New England requiring large retailers to recycle plastic shopping bags. Now it’s poised to be one of the first to ban the bag in Massachusetts.
“It was a great victory,” said Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz of the earlier campaign to recycle plastic bags. Gewirtz is confident that a new law eliminating plastic shopping bags will also become a reality.
The Somerville Board of Alderman recently sent a draft ordinance to the legislative matters committee for final review.
“I’ve heard nothing but support for it from residents," said Alderman Mark Niedergang, a member of the energy and environment special subcommittee. “It’s time has come.”
Citing impacts to marine and land ecosystems by thin-film plastic shopping bags, the law would allow only compostable or marine-degradable plastic bags that meet certain standards. Reusable plastic bags with 2.25 millimeter thickness or better, as well as durable bags of other materials, could be handed out to customers.
The new law would apply to businesses greater than 2,500 square feet or with three or more stores in single ownership that have a combined size of 2,500 square feet, and retail pharmacies of any size with two or more stores under the same ownership within city limits.
Convenience stores that have gross annual sales in excess of $1 million would have to comply.
“Customers ask for them,” said Ben Weiner, owner of a local liquor store who spoke in opposition to the ban at a public hearing in November. Holding up a black plastic bag used at liquor stores, he said the bags are a convenience.
Resident Maureen Barillaro brought a large plastic bag full of retailers’ shopping bags she had collected along the Mystic River before the hearing. Reading from a list, she ticked off the names of the retailers the bags came from, and included the black bags favored by liquor stores.
"Somerville is a growing city with a large population. So there’s a lot of plastic bags,” Barillaro said. “A plastic bag ban is really the only way we're ever going to eliminate this issue.”
Somerville would be the sixth Massachusetts municipality to ban plastic shopping bags. Brookline, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Great Barrington and Nantucket have bans in place.
Nantucket's sweeping biodegradable packaging ban, in place since 1990, calls for using anything other than plastic or Styrofoam on all “packaging added to or supplied by vendors or commercial establishments within the Town of Nantucket for merchandize of any type being removed from the establishment.”
Somerville also passed a ban last year on polystyrene (Styrofoam). The law took effect in May and became enforceable in October.
Both ordinances were modeled after Brookline — the city’s polystyrene and plastic bag ban took effect last year. Those ordinances passed by a vote of Town Meeting in 2012.
“It’s going surprisingly well,” said Dr. Alan Balsam, Brookline’s director of public health, whose department is charged with enforcing the bans. “We expected difficulties.”
Balsam’s department supplied retailers with a list of vendors that supply alternatives to plastic. Still, the polystyrene ban took longer to get full compliance.
“Polystyrene is in every food place; there are over 350 in town,” Balsam said.
This year, 100 food services got six-month exemptions as allowed by the law, and about 80 received an extension to the end of 2014. Most are now in compliance except for one or two items, such as plastic coffee-cup lids and the condiment containers in take-out restaurants, according to Balsam. The chain coffee shops such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks have alternatives to both the cups and lids.
“You go to the grocery stores, and people put one item in a plastic bag,” said Gewirtz, the Somerville alderman. “They leave with dozens of bags. And where do the bags end up? They end up in the landfills and the waterways. They choke marine life and they never biodegrade. My hope is that we'll get plastic bags banned statewide.”
Massachusetts has yet to pass a plastic reduction or elimination law, although there are five proposed bans in committee.
Editor’s note: SCATV public access coverage of the Nov. 20 public hearing was used for a portion of this article.