Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced on Wednesday that he is setting up a vote on subpoenaing Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz after Schultz refused Sanders’s request to testify about the company’s rampant union busting last month.
Sanders said that Schultz’s avoidance of the request has “given us no choice but to subpoena him” and that the committee will decide whether or not to issue a subpoena to force Schultz to appear on March 8.
The committee will also vote on authorizing a committee investigation into corporate union busting, according to a press release from Sanders’s office. The votes will be followed by a hearing on worker rights, which will feature testimony from AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Mary Kay Henry and Teamsters president Sean O’Brien.
“For nearly a year, I and many of my colleagues in the Senate have repeatedly asked Mr. Schultz to respect the constitutional right of workers at Starbucks to form a union and to stop violating federal labor laws,” Sanders said in a statement. “Mr. Schultz has failed to respond to those requests. He has denied meeting and document requests, skirted congressional oversight attempts, and refused to answer any of the serious questions we have asked.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Schultz has given us no choice but to subpoena him,” Sanders continued. “A multi-billion dollar corporation like Starbucks cannot continue to break federal labor law with impunity. The time has come to hold Starbucks and Mr. Schultz accountable.”
Sanders is confident that the vote will be successful, and has told reporters that it will get the support of not only Democrats, but also Republicans on the committee. The committee is looking at March 15 for Schultz to appear.
In February, Schultz turned down a request from Sanders to testify before the committee at a planned hearing about the company’s union busting, which has come into sharp focus over the last two years as the workers have led a groundbreaking union campaign that has seen 286 stores voting to unionize so far. Sanders pledged that he would move to subpoena Schultz, which can only be done in the HELP Committee with a majority vote.
Starbucks workers have been raising the alarm about the company’s union busting, and have said that the three-time CEO was brought back last year specifically to quell the union drive. So far, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued more than 60 complaints of alleged illegal union busting against the company, encompassing over 1,200 violations and earning the title of “one of the worst violators of federal labor law in history,” as Starbucks Workers United says.
The company is now facing another rebellion from its workers — but this time, from its white-collar corporate employees. As first reported by Bloomberg, dozens of corporate employees and managers have signed an open letter to executives and board members protesting the company’s union busting and its return-to-office mandate. The workers say that morale around the office is “at an all time low” and that the supposedly progressive image that the company has created is at risk of crumbling, if it hasn’t already. At least one worker who signed the letter has said that, if the company refuses to listen to the letter, unionization is on the table.
“After Howard issued his edict, I definitely did not feel good working for Starbucks any more — it felt like I am working for a dictator,” Starbucks app developer and letter signer Peter de Jesus told Bloomberg. “I feel like this is not the Starbucks that I signed on for.”
“If it doesn’t lead to any meaningful change, then the next step is obviously to think about possibly unionizing,” de Jesus continued. The union has praised the move, calling the letter signers “courageous.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy