Despite being a standard-bearer for the Corporate Social Responsibility – or CSR – movement, Starbucks’ ubiquitous brand still makes it a poster child for the diehard anti-globalization, profits-are-evil crowd. Not that it’s slowed the company’s growth.
But activists are now gearing up the same strategy that has caused Wal-Mart so much grief. The goal: to paint Starbucks as the sneering, union-busting exploiter of its under-paid hourly workers.
In New York, the National Labor Relations Board will hold hearings this February on allegations that Starbucks illegally resisted employee attempts to organize. The charges come from the Industrial Workers of the World, a historically important but nowadays teeny union of a few thousand socialists and anarchists who want to abolish the “wage system,” among other ideals.
This attempted Wal-Martization of Starbucks probably won't get much traction beyond the far-far-far-leftist fringes who already can’t stand the idea that somebody, somewhere is making money. That’s because Democrats and the mainstream left decided years ago they don’t want Starbucks as an enemy. They love Starbucks. They love the international welfare programs, the hipster coffee confections, those nice chairs, the eclectic alternative adult music, Internet connections, the clean bathrooms.
And yes, like typical consumers, they love knowing that a Starbucks experience in Edmond, Oklahoma, is going to be pretty much the same as the one in New York City.
So regardless of what happens at the NLRB hearing, it seems unlikely that America will be outraged. Starbucks is not Wal-Mart. Starbucks is where we sip lattes while writing emails to protest the proposed Wal-Mart Super Center.
Starbucks is where America picks its battles, while always leaving room for the cream.
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Associated Press: Labor organizers picket a Starbucks
Starbucks corporate responsibility report
Website: Industrial Workers of the World
