On Wednesday, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was questioned by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, dubbed HELP, about the company’s anti-union campaign and violations of federal labor law during his reign.
Schultz’s testimony was a watershed moment for the labor movement. For me, though, it was personal.
On a cold winter evening on the 34th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, I paced anxiously around a conference room. It was almost a year after the first Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize. Sitting in the room with me were two Starbucks corporate attorneys, our store manager, a regional manager, an anti-union barista, one of my fellow pro-union co-workers and our union organizer.
We stood in front of a table as two representatives from the National Labor Relations Board counted our votes to determine if the workers at the Starbucks in the Willis Tower, where I worked, would unionize. As the NLRB representatives started counting, my heart dropped to the floor — we lost by one vote.
On March 20 of this year, Schultz relinquished his role at the company — two weeks before originally announced — and Laxman Narasimhan officially took over as Starbucks’ new CEO. With nearly 300 unionized stores, he is stepping into the role at a moment when the Starbucks “do-gooder” corporate brand is being called to question by thousands of disenchanted workers.
As a child of Indian immigrants, Narasimhan’s story is similar to one I’ve heard countless times: He grew up in India with a difficult childhood and eventually moved abroad after college. He found success after working his way up the ranks of corporate America. It’s a classic immigrant bootstraps story.
In a speech to Starbucks investors in September 2022, Narasimhan said, “I came to this country with nothing. And so, sitting in front of you, I truly am the epitome of the American Dream.”
But the American Dream achieved by Narasimhan is often a whispery myth that’s out of reach for the majority of working class people. Hundreds of thousands of Starbucks workers — many of whom are immigrants — are struggling with low wages, inconsistent hours and schedules, lack of training and insufficient breaks.
It’s why my co-workers and I filed a petition for a union election with the NLRB on Oct. 26, 2022.
In a letter to then-CEO Schultz, we wrote, “Our store and many like it around the country are run like factories rather than the friendly neighborhood cafes that Starbucks once was. We are forced to work in assembly line-like production where we’re expected to serve coffee and food at a fast pace despite whatever is happening in the building such as broken heat or AC, fights, pest infestation, a drug overdose death, and more, with little regard for our physical or mental wellbeing.”
When we filed for a union election, 14 out of 19 of our co-workers, about 75%, had signed union authorization cards. One month later, only eight of them would vote yes. One signer quit, another was out of town and couldn’t vote and four flipped.
The shift wasn’t a coincidence. After we requested an election, Starbucks immediately deployed their union-busting playbook and divided our workplace. They held captive audience meetings where workers met one on one with district and store managers. They threatened that if we voted for the union we wouldn’t get raises and other new benefits in January. They said if we voted for the union we might not have enough money for our Christmas party.
With Schultz at the helm, Starbucks has been accused of being one of the most anti-union companies in recent American history. The company has been accused of firing more than 200 pro-union workers, closed several unionized stores, has been subject to 80 NLRB complaints for labor law violations and currently has more than 1,400 unfair labor practice charges against them. Rather than work with union organizers, Starbucks has become one of the worst violators of federal labor law in recent history.
If Narasimhan really believes in the American Dream, he can show it by ending Starbucks’ union-busting efforts. He can end the company’s association with Littler Mendelson, a notorious anti-union law firm. He can come to the table with workers to bargain a strong contract in good faith that includes higher wages, better benefits and a voice on the job for workers so our families and communities can thrive.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Ankur Singh worked as a barista at the Starbucks at Willis Tower for nearly seven months. During that time, he helped lead a union drive at his store, one of the busiest in the country. This column was produced for the Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
