Starbucks's CEO saw his unionizing baristas as a threat to his life's work. [View all]

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SEATTLE — Howard Schultz, the billionaire founder of Starbucks, stood alone beside the auditorium stage at the company’s global headquarters. The room was packed with 200 of his top executives, all waiting for him to speak.

But first Schultz wanted them to hear from their employees across the country. The lights dimmed and their recorded voices filled the room.

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The 69-year-old CEO had always seen himself as the good guy of American capitalism, believing that his own wealth and Starbucks’s rise to become one of the most ubiquitous brands on the planet was a direct outgrowth of the company’s concern for its workers and their well-being.

Only now all of that was being challenged. Across America, workers who had labored through a once-in-a-century pandemic were concluding that they deserved better and were quitting or demanding more from their bosses, or in the case of some Starbucks workers, unionizing. An organizing effort that began in Buffalo in August 2021 with a handful of cafes had, by the time Schultz took the stage in early July, spread to more than 225 of Starbucks’s 9,000 U.S. stores, sparking hopes of a revived labor movement.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/08/starbucks-union-ceo-howard-schultz/

Another legend in his own mind.