Starbucks is finally past its Howard Schultz era

livemint.com:

Howard Schultz officially stepped down as chief executive officer of Starbucks in March 2023. But with Schultz [whose name has so closely been associated with the Starbucks story], you’re never really sure that he’s gone. Twice before has the coffee-chain’s longtime CEO handed over the company’s reins to a hand-picked successor.

And twice before has he boomeranged right back into the CEO job, claiming he had returned to fix the course of a company that had lost its way. But this week, we got the surest sign yet that the Schultz era at Starbucks is now officially over. The company and the union representing its employees said they had agreed to start discussions about how to reach collective bargaining agreements.

It’s the first real indication of any sort of thaw between the two parties, which have been locked in a bitter battle over workers’ efforts to organize. These initial steps toward an agreement were unlikely to ever have happened with Schultz in charge. He’d been adamantly opposed to a union at Starbucks; in fact, labour organizing itself at the company was one of the factors that precipitated his 2022 return.

Things had gotten nasty back then. Last year, Schultz testified in a Senate committee meeting about the company’s alleged labour law violations, prompting Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to describe Starbucks as waging “the most aggressive and illegal union busting campaign in the modern history of our country." Schultz said repeatedly during the hearing that the company had not broken the law. Seeing the company used as a proxy for union busting and corporate greed was a sharp turn for Starbucks, which has long been a favourite of latte-loving liberals.