Former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz defended the company’s labor practices during testimony before Congress on Wednesday, pushing back against scrutiny over the coffee giant’s response to a widespread unionization campaign.
Schultz, who stepped down from his third stint as CEO earlier this month, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee for the hearing titled, “No Company is Above the Law: The Need to End Illegal Union Busting at Starbucks.” The panel is chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont.
More than 280 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since 2021 in an organizing push that began before Schultz stepped in as interim CEO in October 2022. The company is still in ongoing negotiations with the individual stores.
Sanders accused Starbucks of a nationwide union-busting campaign, pointing to a ruling from March 1 by an administrative judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finding the company committed “egregious and widespread misconduct” that violated labor laws in its efforts to push back on unionization efforts at stores in New York.
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Schultz denied Sanders’ claim that Starbucks had broken the law, and said the company is “confident that those allegations will be proven false.”
In his opening statement to the committee, Schultz listed off a series of benefits Starbucks has offered its employees over the last four decades, noting it was the first company in the nation to offer share ownership to both full and part-time workers starting in 1991, which he called “unprecedented.”
He said employee retention at Starbucks is twice the industry average, and the company offers paid sick leave, fully paid parental leave, and an array of other benefits.
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“There’s literally no company, no company in our competitive set of retail that offers higher value benefits than Starbucks in the United States,” Schultz told the panel.
The longtime leader of the company told lawmakers the average pay for a Starbucks barista is $17.50 an hour, which is more than the average wage in the state of every senator on the panel — including in Sen. Sanders’ home state of Vermont, where it is $13.18.
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Prior to Schultz agreeing to testify, Sanders had threatened earlier this month to hold a vote at the HELP committee to have the former CEO subpoenaed.
