By Kim Fellner
In the epoch of corporate barracudas, the Starbucks Coffee Co. prides itself on benevolence. But is that enough to safeguard employees in the global economy? My research for Wrestling With Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Cappuccino, plunged me below the foam and the fury to discover the many flavors in the Starbucks model of labor relations.
There’s some sweetness in the brew. In contrast to McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, Starbucks is considered a leader in socially responsible business practices. It was an early adopter of health care for domestic partners, pioneered benefits for part-timers, has a vividly multiracial workforce (including top officials), emphasizes training and often promotes from within, although the opportunities are diminishing along with the company’s stock price. In other words, when it comes to how it treats its workers, Starbucks is far better than many retailer giants.
But other tones are more acidic. What Starbucks shares with Wal-Mart and McDonald’s is a baseline hourly wage that generally hovers between $7 and $10. Corporate management also shares an antipathy to unions. “We’re not anti-union, we’re pro-partner,” is the official Starbucks mantra. While there is some validity to the latter assertion, the first part stretches credibility. Over the years, Starbucks has vigorously fought workers' efforts to form unions, sometimes to the point of illegality. Just before Christmas, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found the company guilty of firing three baristas for union organizing activities.
As Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote in his book, Pour Your Heart Into It, he wanted Starbucks workers “to believe in their hearts that management trusted them and treated them with respect. I was convinced that under my leadership, employees would come to realize that I would listen to their concerns. If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn’t need a union.”
There’s complexity as well. Indeed, despite many efforts by workers to form unions in various corners of the company, it sometimes seems that enterprises like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's have trumped the unions in capturing the cultural mind-set of their workforce. As Frances Kunreuther, director of the Building Movement Project, noted from her studies of generational transition in nonprofits, today’s younger workers “don’t like strict hierarchies….They prefer a less formal, less structured work environment, where you work with others.” Further, Gen X and Gen Y cohorts are characterized by their mobility.
“They expect to have many, many more jobs,” Kunreuther told me. “Unionizing is ‘I’m going to be here a long time,’ but young people expect to have seven careers, not one.”
Many of the young workers I interviewed also harbored dreams of self-employment or entrepreneurship. Most seemed oblivious to the existence of unions, dubious about their utility and uninterested in the power of communal action on the job.
But other workers recognize that management should not be the sole arbiter of what’s good for employees. "How's it to work here?” I asked a checker on one of my rare visits to Whole Foods, where the gloss of benevolent paternalism overlays a far more explicit anti-union stance.
“They treat us well,” the thirty-something African American woman told me. “We don’t have a union or anything, but it’s pretty good.” I asked whether she’d like a union. “Yes,” she replied. “Sometimes it’s good to have one, you know, someone who can talk to management for you if something needs fixing.”
To improve the brew, we in the labor movement need to re-vision our organizing models and revitalize our culture, but the underlying reasons for us to persevere remain the same: Alongside blunting economic disparity, union democracy—the power to participate in decision making about one’s economic fate—is perhaps the foremost reason for unions. The global economy has only magnified the need for workers to have a collective presence of their own—one that transcends the individual workplace and has the potential to encompass the global marketplace.
No matter how benevolent the policy of a Starbucks, its corporate management is not going to explicitly argue on behalf of worker concerns. Some of what’s good for General Motors or Starbucks might also benefit employees. But as the current crisis in the auto industry makes all too clear, some of what makes life sustainable for workers, be it living wages, health benefits or safety regulations, can easily be sacrificed to the corporate bottom line unless there is a countervailing demand. Only last month, Starbucks announced it could no longer guarantee the employer match for its 401(k) retirement plan. Even with a union, the task of protecting workers' rights and benefits is formidable. But without a union, it’s virtually impossible.
The debate over the fate of the auto industry holds another lesson: Where worse employers predominate, better employers have a hard time maintaining their best practices. If we want Starbucks to retain its best practices and improve its labor stance, perhaps we should concentrate on organizing McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, which drag down the retail and fast-food sectors and put better corporate actors at a disadvantage. And if Starbucks wants to keep the benefits and standards on which it has banked its reputation, it should probably hope for the same. Then we’ll all be able to share a cup that workers can really savor.
Kim Fellner is the author of (Rutgers University Press, July 2008). Fellner is development director at Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
