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.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.