Starbucks’s Howard Schultz Isn’t a Caring Liberal Boss. He’s a Vicious Union Buster.
Reading the Washington Post’s recent profile of Howard Schultz, you might be convinced of the Starbucks CEO’s benevolent, liberal image. But his unrelenting drive to smash the Starbucks union shows he’s no different from any other greedy corporate leader.
Howard Schultz speaking at the Annual Meeting of Shareholders in Seattle, Washington, on March 22, 2017. (Jason Redmond / AFP via Getty Images)
In recent months, the Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe has written outstanding pieces on McDonald’s workers in Pennsylvania, Dollar General workers in Connecticut, and superb profiles of prominent Starbucks Workers United organizer Jaz Brisack, and Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls. Jaffe is one of several journalists — Lauren Kaori Gurley also at the Washington Post, Noam Scheiber at the New York Times, Josh Eidelson at Bloomberg, and Steven Greenhouse and others at the Guardian — who have documented the inspiring union campaign at Starbucks and exposed the intimidation its workers have faced for trying to organize a union, which is supposed to be a federally protected right.
On Saturday, Jaffe published a lengthy article in the Post on how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has responded to the historic union campaign, which has now spread to over two hundred forty stores nationwide. Jaffe’s story has much to recommend it.
But he lets Schultz off too easily and too often takes him at his word, even where there’s overwhelming evidence to suggest the contrary.
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