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Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is set to testify Wednesday morning before a Senate committee chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is expected to grill the billionaire on the coffee giant's scorched-earth union-busting campaign that has drawn hundreds of unfair labor practice charges and dozens of complaints from the NLRB.
"Let's be clear. In America, workers have the constitutional right to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining for higher wages and better working conditions," Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement ahead of the hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am ET.
"I look forward to hearing from Mr. Schultz as to when he intends to end his illegal anti-union activities and begin signing fair first contracts with the unions," the Vermont senator added.
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Following Schultz's appearance, the committee will hear from a separate panel of witnesses, including current Starbucks worker Maggie Carter and former employee Jaysin Saxton, who was fired after he led a union drive at a store in Augusta, Georgia. Last April, that location became the first Starbucks shop in Georgia to unionize.
The NLRB filed a complaint in December alleging that Saxton was unlawfully terminated for engaging in protected union activity. Saxton is one of more than 60 union organizers fired by Starbucks since December 2021, when workers in Buffalo, New York voted to form the company's first union in the U.S.
Since then, nearly 300 Starbucks locations have opted to unionize in the face of aggressive pushback from the company, which has slashed workers' hours, withheld raises, threatened worse benefits for unionized shops, and shut down entire stores in an effort to crush organizing momentum.
Starbucks Workers United said that more than a dozen Starbucks employees from across the United States are expected to travel to Washington, D.C. to attend the hearing, which comes after weeks of stonewalling from Starbucks executives.
Schultz, who has been accused of nearly 100 labor law violations since early 2022, finally agreed to testify earlier this month under threat of subpoena. Schultz stepped down as Starbucks' chief executive on March 20, though he remains on the company's board of directors.
"The HELP Committee intends to make clear that in America we must not have a two-tiered justice system in which billionaires and large corporations can break the law with impunity, while working-class people are held accountable for their actions," Sanders said.
