Starbucks’ Board Chair Is Making Millions Off Union Pension Funds

Starbucks chairwoman Mellody Hobson runs an investment firm that’s raking in millions in fees from unionized workers’ pension funds — all while Starbucks wages an aggressive anti-union campaign against its workers.

Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit - Day 2

Mellody Hobson, Starbucks chairwoman and president of Ariel Investments, speaks at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, DC, 2017. (Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Fortune)


As Starbucks wages an aggressive anti-union campaign resulting in the firing of sixteen pro-union workers, the company’s chairwoman has been running an investment firm raking in millions in fees from unionized workers’ pension funds while delivering subpar returns to retirees.

Starbucks chairwoman Mellody Hobson has been publicly defending the coffee giant’s union-busting activities. She recently told Starbucks shareholders that while “we absolutely understand and recognize the right of our partners to organize,” the company will refuse to stay neutral in union elections because that “limits our ability to speak to our partners in certain ways, and that goes directly against the DNA of the company.”

At the same time, Hobson is leading Ariel Investments, which manages more than $640 million in assets for Chicago-area pension funds, earning the firm more than $3 million annually in fees. The members and retirees of those pension funds are overwhelmingly represented by unions — including the same one, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), that is seeking to organize Starbucks workers.

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