Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has history of opposing unions
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An anti-union banner is seen at the Starbucks Broadway and Denny location on Seattle’s Capitol Hill on March 22, 2022.
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Howard Schultz is back in the top job for one week StarbucksThe year ended with the unionization of seven additional cafes owned by companies, taking their total to 16.
Starbucks unionists will need to be ready for a more aggressive response. Schultz is a former union leader who oversaw Starbucks’ growth as a coffee chain in Seattle to become a major global company.
Although it is too early to know if Schultz will change his playbook, workers feel emboldenedHis recent words and actions could be clues to rising wages and tight labor markets.
He announced Monday that the company would suspend stock buybacksEven though he was not planning to make investments in its stores or employees, he reiterated his belief that the company’s team approach to labor management is a good idea.
“I am not anti-union. I am pro-Starbucks, pro-partner, pro-Starbucks culture,” Schultz said. We didn’t reach this point by joining a union.
Both labor specialists and organizers expect Schultz to lead the firm’s efforts to end the labor drive.
John Logan from San Francisco State University, who is a labor professor, said: “I believe they’re likely to increase their anti-union activities and do whatever they can,”
Starbucks’s former CEO Kevin Johnson has been accused of union busting by Workers United. Workers United has filed numerous complaints to the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB accused the company also of retaliating to Phoenix workers who are pro-union. Starbucks denied these claims.
Johnson was very hands-off in public, and Rossann Williams took the lead. However, Schultz was the one who spoke with baristas in Buffalo, New York, when it started last year’s union push.
Although more than 180 companies-owned stores have so far filed petitions for union elections, that’s still only about 1% of Starbucks’ total U.S. presence of almost 9,000 locations. One cafe out of all the voting locations has voted against unionizing.
Schultz’s union opposition
Former chairman and CEO of Starbucks, and United States 2020 presidential candidate Howard Schultz visits Fox & Friends at Fox News Channel Studios on April 2, 2019 in New York City.
Steven Ferdman | Getty Images
Schultz has been against unions since his early days with the company. Schultz’s 1997 book “Pour Your heart into it: How Starbucks Built an Company One Cup at A Time,” which he co-authored along Dori Jones Yang, details the history of Starbucks’ first union struggle when he worked as a marketing director.
In 1984, the growing company was bought by Peet’s Tea and Coffee. Schultz says that integration was difficult due to differences in company cultures. After feeling neglected by some Starbucks workers, Schultz explained that they created a union petition to protest their treatment. Voting was won by the union.
Schultz stated that “the incident taught me a very important lesson”: Trust and confidence are the most valuable commodity a company can have with employees. People will be disillusioned if they believe that management doesn’t fairly share the rewards. The company’s future will be compromised if employees start to distrust management.
Schultz left Starbucks to start Il Giornale espresso shop. His early success encouraged him to purchase Starbucks and combine the two companies. Schultz explains that a Starbucks barista could decertify the union by himself in “Pour Your Heart Into It.”
He said, “When decertification was supported by so many of my people, it was an indication to me that they began to believe that I would keep my word.” Their distrust began to fade and their morale was increasing.
However, employees of Starbucks and former union representatives have refuted this narrative. It was in a 2019 Politico articleIn connection with Schultz’s political aspirations, Dave Schmitz was the organizing director at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union local in the 1980s. He stated that Starbucks submitted the decertification petition.
Schultz didn’t respond at the time to inquiries about the Politico Report.
Schultz was also fond of painting the benefits offered by the coffee chain such as insurance coverage for part time workers as his own ideas as part of a larger belief that employees will be treated well. Politico reports that these benefits are part of the Starbucks union contract.
“I believed that employees would realize under my leadership that I would listen and take into consideration their needs.” Schultz said that employees wouldn’t have to form a union if they believed in me and my motives.
In 2000, Schultz was forced to resign as CEO. He would then return in 2008 when the financial crisis ravaged Starbucks. In the interim, Schultz was chief global strategist. However, in Manhattan, some baristas tried to organize. Starbucks was able to thwart the attempt, but a judge at the NLRB ruled that Starbucks violated federal labor law in 2008.
Schultz served as the second chief executive during his 2016 tenure. reportedly called a California baristaWho circulated an union petition and successfully talked him out of organizing his workers.
Schultz quit his active position at Starbucks in 2002. In the following year, Schultz publicly discussed his desire to run for president as an independent centrist. However, it failed to generate enthusiasm.
Pandemics changed everything
While Schultz was gone, Starbucks and its baristas were affected by a pandemic which changed the way workers feel about their work and how they can do their job. Starbucks employees in Buffalo submitted a petition with the NLRB to join Workers United.
As Schultz returns to the limelight, attitudes about unions are changing dramatically. Gallup polling from September 2021 shows 68% of Americans approve of labor unions — the highest reading since a 71% approval rating in 1965.
A win in a Starbucks café creates more momentum to push the union push. AmazonR.E.I. Further fuelling the movement was R.E.I.
“[Starbucks and Amazon]Logan, a labor professor said that he believes the same anti-union campaign tactics that were successful in the past will be effective this time. However, they are finding that certain cases prove it to not be true.” Although I doubt either of these labor campaigns would have been successful two or three decades ago, something has changed.”
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