Starbucks is ‘choosing to fight tooth and nail’ against unions: SEIU president

SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the Starbucks CFO's comments on its partners, the unionization push, and why labor dynamics have changed since the pandemic.

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- Moving forward here on the day, the US has added 261,000 jobs in October, while unionizing efforts continue to make its way through the labor market, Starbucks being one of many companies all too familiar with workers' unionization efforts. Here's what CFO Rachel Ruggeri had to say on the matter.

RACHEL RUGGERI: We truly believe a side-by-side relationship with our partner is the very best path forward. But we respect the process. What we're focused on is continuing to create the very best experience for our partners. We know that has worked for the last 50 years. And we're confident it actually underpins the success of our new era of growth. So that's where we're focused.

- And to take a closer look at the labor movement in the US and workers' rights, we have Mary Kay Henry, International President of the Service Employees International Union. Thank you so much for taking the time here with us this morning. First and foremost, just got to get your reaction to what you heard from the Starbucks CFO.

MARY KAY HENRY: Well, if that was the case, then workers would be at a bargaining table and being able to have a say directly on the job. And instead the Starbucks is choosing to fight tooth and nail, close stores when people unionize. And we really welcome the day when the CFO's comments are the reality with Starbucks because the partners love that company. And they want a seat at the table and a voice on the job and to be respected, protected, and paid what they're worth.

- Mary Kay, it's Julie here. I'm curious if you've ever had an experience where a company has said, come on in. Yes, we're happy to have unions here. Let's negotiate. I mean, is it much more the norm to have more of an adversarial relationship?

MARY KAY HENRY: Well, there's been periods in American history where employers have said, come on in. When Kaiser Permanente was founded in the '40s in California, it opened as a health-care provider that all the jobs were union. And today they have the highest patient satisfaction and the employee satisfaction in the health-care sector. Harley-Davidson, it was a conflict with those workers, but now the United Steelworkers and Harley-Davidson have a very good relationship and the company's profitable.

So it's true, I think, what you're saying. The norm in the US economy is for corporations to resist workers who want to join together. And we're seeing a historic wave of unionization efforts that I believe are driving wages up, even though wage growth is slowing, as we have this terrific jobs report this month. And I think that's why we're going to continue to see workers joining together at Starbucks, Amazon, fast food, airports, and across the service and care sector, because people want to turn poverty-wage jobs into good jobs that they can raise their families on.

- Mary Kay, what would getting it right look like for Starbucks? Are you talking $25 an hour and a guaranteed 40 hours a week?

MARY KAY HENRY: Well, getting it right would be recognizing the union at the 250 stores that have already voted to join the union and allowing workers who want to file for elections the ability to do it without their managers interfering with it or changing their schedules or moving people around stores. The continued antiunion campaign should stop. That would be a way to get it right. And then ultimately it would be terrific if Starbucks would break with major corporations in the US and do what they do in other countries around the world and set a national bargaining table, where there could be a standard, as you're suggesting, that the workers and the corporation could figure out together.

This is in a climate where corporate profits are at an all-time high, the highest in 70 years. And so that's why, I think, the Starbucks and Amazon organizing is connected to the economic health of major corporations here in this country and around the world. And it's why things would go so much better if employers would stop resisting the union and start respecting the right of workers to decide for themselves whether they want to be in a union.

- Well, it's also driven by the worker shortage, right? It's harder to find people to fill those positions. And so we've seen this period of a little bit more of the power being put back in the workers' hands. But that may be about to shift again, right? If we're heading into a recession, if we are going to see the job market turn around in the next year or so, could that also change the dynamics for unions?

MARY KAY HENRY: I actually think what's driving workers to join together in unions is beyond the shortage and is about the two-year pandemic that people just worked their way through and had the experience of their coworkers get hardest hit by the pandemic because people were showing up every day, often without the personal protective equipment they needed. And I think when people continued to work and were facing life-and-death choices-- I've heard this directly from nurses, retail workers, fast food workers-- they decided that when their employers started to resist them and threaten their job, that was like, OK, if you're going to threaten to fire me after I just spent two years risking my life to show up to work, then I probably don't need this job. And that's why I'm going to join together with my coworkers and create a collective bargaining agreement so that workers can be respected on the job, protected in their health, and paid what they're worth.

- Mary Kay Henry, SEIU International President, good to see you. Have a great weekend.

MARY KAY HENRY: Thank you.