When Starbucks founder Howard Schultz appears before U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday, he can expect a grilling. Sanders has long had Schultz in his sights. The man who built Starbucks into a global coffee chain has fiercely resisted his workers' efforts to unionize.
The hearing will be a faceoff between two high-profile leaders who have positioned themselves as champions of workers, said Steven Greenhouse, a longtime labor reporter who is now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. But Schultz's image as a kinder, gentler capitalist has been tarnished by hundreds of labor violations and an anti-union campaign that has drawn rebuke from the National Labor Relations Board, as well as some of Starbucks' own investors. "Bernie will bring much more attention to his charges that Starbucks and Schultz are engaged in illegal and egregious union busting," Greenhouse said. The bully pulpit effect of the hearing "will turn up the heat on Starbucks because Bernie has such a big following, especially among young Americans," Greenhouse said.
