'It was honestly hard not to laugh out loud at some of the [bald-faced] lies he told.'
of former CEO and current board member Howard Schultz at the Senate Committee on Housing, Education, Labor, and Pensions .
But if viewers were expecting an inquisition from the senators that would reveal new details about Starbucks’s anti-union push, instead they received what was mostly a milquetoast intervention met with successful stonewalling by Schultz. Greene noted that even as Schultz was speaking about worker safety at the committee, around 10:30 am Wednesday at a Starbucks store in the Pittsburgh area workers faced an unnerving situation. “The fire alarms went off and announced a shelter in place and lockdown,” an unnamed Starbucks worker reported over Twitter. There were reports of an active shooter in the area.
“Ultimately, I have come to accept that a billionaire will never be able to reflect on [the] shop floor worker’s level and therefore have learned to cope that we might never see an apology or admission of guilt from him,” said Mason Boykin, a Starbucks worker based in Jacksonville, Florida. After Schultz spoke, Starbucks worker Maggie Carter and fired Starbucks worker Jaysin Saxton had the opportunity to speak to the assembled senators.
The hearing came after months of mounting pressure by the baristas and their allies, including Sanders. In the first phase of the campaign in 2022, the victory at the first store in Buffalo over union-busting tactics that an administrative judge deemed “egregious and widespread” led to an exponential increase in stores filing for unions across the country.
“It’s not just a one-store fight. It’s a nationwide fight,” said Ana Martinez, a Starbucks barista in Lynbrook, New York. “I’m just glad that this has brought us all together.”Saurav Sarkar is a freelance writer based in the New York area who frequently covers Starbucks Workers United. He can be reached at sauravsarkar.com or on Twitter @sauravthewriter.
Democratic senators alternately beseeched and challenged Schultz to live up to both his self-professed progressive values and the law, while Republicans by and large thanked him for his role as a billionaire businessman. Schultz, however, insisted that both he and the company had followed the law in all respects. For example, in response to questions by Sen., the chair of the committee, Schultz denied knowledge of — or involvement in — decisions to fire or discipline workers who were involved in union drives.
The two different perspectives on what constitutes a danger to Starbucks workers revealed a deeper contrast in the perspectives of upper management and those on the shop floor. While Schultz dodged questions about the legality of Starbucks’s union-busting tactics, baristas were dealing with sub-living wage incomes, cuts to their hours and retaliation against union activities.
"Baristas were left satisfied that Schultz was at least being forced to answer more difficult questions than usually confronted with in the press."
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