Karla Coté/Sipa USA via AP Images
Demonstrators gathered at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in New York on February 15, 2022, to stand in solidarity with the “Memphis 7,” Starbucks employees who were fired for union organizing in Memphis, Tennessee.
Workers of the corporate world, beware. A bizarre anti-union virus is raging across corporate America. Outwardly, the virus says it’s not anti-union. But when it attacks, this virus shows its true anti-union colors.
In recent weeks, the virus has attacked workers at several well-known corporations, most notably Starbucks, REI, and The New York Times. These companies have taken an unabashedly two-faced approach: insisting they’re not anti-union, while at the same time seeking to squelch unionization efforts.
It’s dismaying to see respected CEOs push such a blatantly hypocritical line. Evidently, these executives followed the advice of some anti-union lawyers and consultants and said their companies are not anti-union even as they fought unionization, somehow believing this anti-union mishmash would fool pro-union customers at Starbucks, REI, and the Times and reduce any anger about these companies’ anti-union actions. But if executives proclaim to their employees and customers that they’re not anti-union and then openly battle against unionization, it can only mean that they’re taking their employees and customers for fools, too dumb to see through their hypocrisy.
Starbucks—which now faces unionization drives at more than 100 of its cafés—recently created a carefully worded anti-union website; its very first sentence says a major reason that baristas don’t need a union is Starbucks’s “transparency and having open conversations with respect and honesty.” Telling workers that you’re not anti-union and then mounting a fierce anti-union campaign, as Starbucks has done, is the opposite of transparency and “having open conversations with respect and honesty.” It disrespects workers’ intelligence.
Starbucks often says it’s “pro-partner” and not “anti-union.” In American business parlance, however, “partner” typically denotes someone with an equal voice in management. Not only is Starbucks in no way considering an equal voice for its “partners,” but it’s fighting its mightiest to prevent its workers from having an effective voice through a union.
Here’s some free advice for Starbucks, REI, and the Times that their high-priced lawyers and consultants might not be honest enough to give them—saying you’re not anti-union and then battling against unions makes you look hypocritical and dishonest. I feel badly that Meredith Kopit Levien, the CEO of The New York Times—where I worked for 31 years—is following someone’s ill-advised advice to say the company isn’t anti-union. Writing to a group of Times tech workers who are seeking to unionize, Levien declared, “We don’t believe unionizing in XFun [a product development group] is the right move. But that’s not because I’m anti-union.” Perhaps the high-priced lawyers and consultants who propose these two-faced statements think they’re being clever, but for a CEO to be so nakedly two-faced angers employees, alienates customers, and, in this case, tarnishes the Times’ brand, undermining the Times’ hard-earned reputation for upholding truth and accuracy.
If a company and its management are truly not anti-union, then they should butt out, not interfere, and let employees decide for themselves whether they want a union.
Here’s more free advice to those companies that they’re evidently not getting from their high-priced lawyers. Saying that you are not anti-union means something simple and straightforward: that you don’t—and won’t—oppose unionization. If a company and its management are truly not anti-union, then they should butt out, not interfere, and let employees decide for themselves whether they want a union. A company that’s not anti-union doesn’t send anti-union emails, doesn’t disseminate anti-union literature, and doesn’t hold mandatory anti-union meetings.
If you’re a CEO and feel you truly need to fight against your workers unionizing, fine. Then at least be honest about it and acknowledge that you’re anti-union. That way at least, you’re leveling with your employees (and customers) and not trying to deceive them.
I get that many corporate executives don’t like unions. Labor unions get in the way of what many executives learned in business school: the importance of maximizing profits and maximizing managerial autonomy and flexibility. President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress saw things very differently when they enacted the landmark National Labor Relations Act in 1935. They saw how badly millions of American workers were suffering during the Great Depression, and they viewed labor unions as a vital tool to lift the nation’s workers. They believed that a wave of unionization was needed to create a fairer economy and increase workers’ measly bargaining power vis-à-vis corporations.
There’s no denying that America’s workers are hugely better off than during the Great Depression, but it is also undeniable that many big problems remain for America’s workers: among them, that income inequality has climbed to its highest level in a century, and that millions of workers are still treated shabbily and still have a puny voice at work. In other words, many of the original reasons for unionization—to ensure better pay and treatment and increase workers’ bargaining power—still obtain, even if unions get in the way of the CEO mantra of “maximizing autonomy and flexibility.”
Starbucks, REI, and The New York Times all profess to be progressive-minded companies, and one would think that progressive companies believe in the notion of creating a fairer economy. Unions are an essential tool for creating a fairer economy, an economy with less inequality and poverty and more opportunity and mobility.
These “progressive” executives who claim that they’re not anti-union seem happy that other companies are unionized. That means millions of workers at other companies will have more leisure time and money to spend on Starbucks lattes, REI ski jackets, and New York Times subscriptions. But these CEOs oppose unionization efforts at their own company because a union’s demands for higher pay and a strong worker voice could eat into profits and managerial autonomy. At REI, the CEO, Eric Artz, while saying, “We do not oppose unions,” explained that he opposed having a union at REI because it would muck up the company’s efforts to “resolve concerns at the speed the world is moving.” In other words, if we are ever forced to sit down and discuss matters with our workers and their union, that will be a nuisance that undercuts management’s all-important autonomy.
One friend has mocked the mindset of Starbucks, REI, and the Times, writing, “So disappointed to find out the union we were planning is actually the only bad one, according to my boss. He should know, he loves unions normally. Oh well.”
There’s something awry when CEOs seem to suggest that unionization is great for thee, but not for me. Fortunately, workers aren’t fools and are smart enough to see through this hypocrisy.
