SILVER SPRING, Md. — Starbucks founder and new interim CEO Howard Schultz announced Monday that the coffee chain was suspending its share repurchase program to “invest more profit into our people and our stores.”
The pivot in strategy comes just three weeks after Starbucks announced that Schultz, who bought the company in 1987 and led it for more than three decades, would be taking over the company’s top role until it found a permanent CEO. Since that announcement, analysts and experts have speculated that Schultz was being brought back to help the company fight a rising worker rights campaign that has seen six of its stores voting to unionize since December, with at least 140 more in 27 states filing petitions for union elections.
