CNN Gave Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz a Platform To Whine About Unions

Well, CNN is continuing its rapid decline into being Fox News lite, I guess. This time by letting Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz whine about how unions are bad for business. LOL. That man is worth 4 billion dollars according to Forbes, and yet he thinks this is a valuable use of his time. Billionaires are not OK.

So now, Schultz has utilized his vast network of resources to get real estate on CNN.com to complain about how unions are ruining the very fabric of American society. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that was the point of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair when we studied about it in school, but I digress. (Spoilers: It was not.) Here’s what Schultz had to say, per CNN:

“It’s my belief that the efforts of unionization in America are in many ways a manifestation of a much bigger problem,” he told [CNN’s Poppy] Harlow. “There is a macro issue here that is much, much bigger than Starbucks.”

So what does Schultz, who I’m certain does not know how much a banana at the grocery store costs, think the actual problem is? (I warn you, don’t have any liquids in your mouth you could do a spit take with while reading this.) From the above article:

“I’ve talked to thousands of our Starbucks partners,” he told Harlow. “I was shocked, stunned to hear the loneliness, the anxiety, the fracturing of trust in government, fracturing of trust in companies, fracturing of trust in families, the lack of hope in terms of opportunity.”

American companies are “faced with unionization because [workers are] upset, not so much with the company, but the situation.”

Oh, I see; Americans are unionizing not because they’re paid terrible wages and are treated like shit, but rather because they’ve lost trust in (gestures wildly) everything. You know, if you make enough money and have a good work/life balance, you can afford to go out, have meals with friends, and you know, have money to do stuff with people. Funny that.

Can you imagine not only believing what Schultz is spewing, but believing it so much that you bought your way onto national TV to say it with your whole chest?

As a reminder, Starbucks has been fined for violating National Labor Relations Board policies toward employees involved in the union effort. Per CNN:

The NLRB has found, in some cases, that the company illegally threatened and fired workers involved in the union effort. A judge recently ruled that Starbucks must stop firing employees who are involved in the union. Starbucks said the measure was unwarranted, and, relating to the NLRB’s findings, that it endeavors to comply with the law.

I wonder if Starbucks’ tactics fed into any “anxiety” “loneliness” of “fracturing of trust”? Hmmmmm.

I will repeat myself. Billionaires are not OK. In every sense of that word, because on a societal level, how can we tolerate such hoarding of resources, especially when the person doing the hoarding is so woefully out of touch? These people trying to unionize are just trying to be treated fairly, paid fairly; and a union is the best way to accomplish that. Do these a-hole billionaires never stop to ask themselves if maybe they’re the bad guys? (We know the answer here. They’re too busy going on TV to ever stop to do any real self-reflection.)

What is the point here? To make life as hard as possible for people while maximizing your own profits? Why?! Charles Dickens wrote a book about this, Howard. Let me tell you, it did not work out well for Ebeneezer Scrooge without some deep soul-searching and change on his part.

Schultz is stepping down from his role as CEO of Starbucks soon and will retain his board seat once he does. No word on what he’ll do with all his free time once his tenure is over, but if you told me he’s going to wait outside dentists’ offices to tell children there is no tooth fairy just to make sure their day had a little less joy in it, I wouldn’t doubt you. It just seems like that’s the kind of person he is.

(featured image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)