They want to be nice, but they do not want workers to unionize
By Phil Mattera for the Dirt Diggers Digest
More large corporations are said to be signaling their commitment to environmental and social goals by including those targets in the incentive packages offered to their chief executives.
That’s the message of
a recent article in the Financial Times,
which highlights the example of Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, whose $20 million
compensation total in 2021 was based in part on reducing the company’s use of
plastic straws and lowering methane emissions at the farms producing the milk
for its lattes.
Those are laudable
goals, but they may also amount to another form of greenwashing. After all, in
the case of Starbucks, the company’s proxy statement indicates that the lion’s
share of Johnson’s bonus was still determined by conventional financial
benchmarks such as profitability.
There is also the
question of whether the alternative metrics are all appropriate. Along with
“planet-positive environmental goals,” the minority share of Johnson’s bonus
was also set by “people-positive goals.” According to the proxy, that includes
factors such as diversity. Yet what about other employment issues?
Starbucks is now in
the midst of a widespread union drive among its baristas. Since employees
at a location in Buffalo, New York voted for representation in December,
organizing drives have sprung up at outlets around the country. A new union
called Starbucks Workers United has reported that National Labor Relations
Board petitions have been filed at more than 100 locations around the country.
These initiatives have not exactly been welcomed by Starbucks management. While claiming it will bargain in good faith with the Buffalo group, the company is employing some traditional anti-union tactics, such as mandatory meetings in which managers seek to discourage organizing.
Johnson set the tone
for this himself. Just before the vote in Buffalo in December, he gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in
which he trotted out the usual corporate line that unionization would destroy
the rapport between workers and management: “It goes against having that direct
relationship with our partners that has served us so well for decades and
allowed us to build this great company.” Around the same time, the company sent
a text message to workers saying: “Please vote and vote no to protect what you
love about Starbucks.”
It remains to be seen
whether the company will continue to rely on this guilt-tripping approach
rather than hard-core unionbusting. An indication of where things may be headed
was the move by the company earlier this month to fire seven activists at a Memphis
location, claiming they violated safety rules.
This brings us back to
Johnson’s bonus. Will his handling of the organizing drive factor into his 2022
bonus? If he succeeds in blocking widespread unionization of the chain, will
that be seen as a “people-positive” achievement?
In all likelihood,
next year’s proxy statement will be silent on the union campaign, regardless of
how it turns out. Yet Johnson will no doubt be rewarded financially if he
thwarts the effort.
And that points to the
problem with the employment aspects of corporate social responsibility
practices. While companies have come to regard environmental goals as changes
that everyone can rally around, organizing drives are another matter. Faced
with the prospect of unionization, even supposedly progressive companies still
act like the benighted employers of a century ago.
Until corporations
such as Starbucks begin respecting the right of workers to form unions and
bargain collectively, they have no business presenting themselves as socially
responsible.
