Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has heard from 14 Senate Democrats urging him to stop union-busting and turn Starbucks into “the twenty-first century leader for corporations by once again setting industry standards for what is possible when workers are heard and their rights protected.”
The letter, led by Sen. Cory Booker, focuses on Schultz’s recent announcement that Starbucks will increase pay and benefits—but only for workers in stores that are not unionizing. The senators note that Starbucks’ excuse for excluding unionized or unionizing workers doesn’t hold water. “As you and your lawyers know well,” they write, “there is nothing keeping Starbucks from offering benefits to workers in a union—the union simply needs to be consulted first. That is the purpose of a union: It gives workers a voice in their workplace. Your comments that workers in support of union are ‘colluding with outside union forces’ contradicts your goal to ‘co-creat[e] our future directly as partners.’ Your ‘partners’ include more than a thousand workers across 17 states who have, to date, voted in favor of a union.”
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