March, 29 2023, 10:25am EDT

PREPARED REMARKS: Chairman Sanders Questions Howard Schultz in HELP Committee Hearing and Calls on Starbucks to End the Illegal Union Busting
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, today led the committee in a hearing titled, “No Company Is Above the Law: The Need to End Illegal Union Busting at Starbucks.”
Sanders’ opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below and can be watched here.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will come to order.
Let me get to the point of this hearing. Today in America, over 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions are working for starvation wages. Unbelievably, despite an explosion in technology and increases in worker productivity, the average worker is making over $50 a week less today than he or she made 50 years ago – after adjusting for inflation. Unless we change the nature of our economy, it is likely that the younger generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents.
What that means is that workers throughout our country are struggling to pay for housing, struggling to pay for healthcare and prescription drugs, struggling to put food on the table, struggling to pay off their student debt and deal with other basic necessities. And while that is the reality for the working class of our country, here is another reality. And that is that the people on top have never had it so good. Today in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we’ve ever had with the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, with CEOs now making 400 times more than their workers, and with 3 people on top now owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society. That’s the economic reality that exists today. The rich get much richer, working families struggle.
And, as a result of that reality, what we are now seeing is a major increase in trade union organizing. Throughout our country, in blue collar jobs and in white collar jobs, workers are standing up and fighting back and are forming unions in order to improve their wages, their benefits, their working conditions.
These workers know, as I do, that union workers earn nearly 20% more, on average, than non-union workers. These workers also know, as I do, that union workers have better health care benefits, better paid family and medical leave policies, are much more likely to have a pension and are less likely to be victims of health and safety violations compared to non-union workers.
At a time when 71% of the American people now approve of unions – the highest level since 1965 -- there has been a major revitalization of the trade union movement in our country. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of union elections taking place in America has gone up by 53% and since 2020 workers have voted to form a union in over 70 percent of union elections.
That’s the good news for those of us who understand that strong unions are a vital part of rebuilding the declining middle class in this country.
The bad news is that in order to combat this increase in union organizing, corporations have engaged in an unprecedented level of illegal union busting activities.
Which takes us to the focus of today’s hearing.
Over the past 18 months, Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union busting campaign in the modern history of our country. That union busting campaign has been led by Howard Schultz, the multi-billionaire founder and director of Starbucks who is with us this morning only under the threat of subpoena.
Let’s be clear about the nature of Starbucks vicious anti-union efforts. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed over 80 complaints against Starbucks for violating federal labor law, there have been over 500 unfair labor practice charges lodged against this company and judges have found that Starbucks broke the law 130 times across six states since workers began organizing in the fall of 2021.
These violations include the illegal firing of more than a dozen Starbucks workers for “the crime” of exercising their right to form a union and to collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Since the first Starbucks union was certified more than 450 days ago in Buffalo, workers at more than 360 stores across nearly 40 states have held union elections. 83 percent of these elections have resulted in a union victory and today nearly 300 Starbucks coffee shops employing more than 7,000 workers have a union – despite Starbucks aggressive anti-union campaign. But with nearly 300 shops voting to form a union, Starbucks has refused to sign a single first contract with the union. Not a single one. Think about it.
A multi-billion dollar company, with unlimited resources, with all kinds of lawyers, advisors, consultants, has not yet signed one contract with any of their nearly 300 unionized shops.
Just a few weeks ago, on March 1st, an Administrative Law Judge found Starbucks guilty of “egregious and widespread misconduct” which showed “a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights.”
In a 220-page ruling, this judge found that Starbucks illegally retaliated against employees for unionizing; promised improved pay and benefits if workers rejected the union; conducted illegal surveillance of pro-union workers; refused to hire prospective employees who supported the union; relocated union organizers to new stores and overstaffed stores ahead of union votes – all clear violations of federal labor law.
The judge also found that Starbucks “widespread coercive behavior over six months had permeated every store in the Buffalo market.”
The judge ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven workers who were wrongfully terminated, re-open a pro-union store in Buffalo that was illegally shut down, and pay “reasonable consequential damages” to more than two dozen workers whose rights were violated by Starbucks.
And let’s be clear. Starbucks egregious union busting campaign is not limited to Buffalo. It is happening all over America.
Federal courts in Tennessee and Michigan have issued emergency injunctions requiring Starbucks to reinstate workers who were illegally fired and to prohibit the coffee chain from firing workers for supporting unionization efforts in the future.
In Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona, the NLRB has charged Starbucks with committing eight violations of labor law when it disciplined, fired, and forced out workers because they cooperated with federal investigations.
On November 30th of last year, the NLRB found that Starbucks unlawfully refused to recognize and bargain with the union at its Reserve Roastery Store in Seattle.
NLRB judges have found that Starbucks illegally threatened to withhold benefits (including health insurance) from pro-union workers in Denver, Colorado; Overland Park, Kansas; Seattle, Washington; and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The pattern in all of these stores is clear: On the one hand, you have workers making $13, $14 or $15 an hour with minimal benefits, working 20, 30 or 40 hours a week depending on a totally unpredictable schedule dictated by their managers, trying to achieve dignity and justice on the job. On the other hand, we have a corporation worth $113 billion controlled by an individual worth nearly $4 billion who are using their unlimited resources to do everything possible, legal and illegal, to deny these workers their constitutional rights.
The fundamental issue we are confronting today is whether we have a system of justice that applies to all, or whether billionaires and large corporations can break the law with impunity. I have read Mr. Schultz’s comments to the media in which he expresses his strong anti-union views. As an American, Mr. Schultz is entitled to those views and any other views he holds. But even if he is a multi-billionaire and the leader of a large corporation he is not entitled to break the law.
So today, I will be asking Mr. Schultz whether he will do what an Administrative Law Judge has ordered him to do. And that is to record and distribute a 14-page notice which states that Starbucks has violated Federal labor law, to inform Starbucks employees about their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, how Starbucks has violated those rights, and to assure that Starbucks will not infringe upon those rights in the future.
In other words, I will be asking Mr. Schultz whether or not he intends to obey the law. Further, I will be asking Mr. Schultz another question. And that is whether or not he is prepared to promise this committee that within 14 days of this hearing, Starbucks will exchange proposals with the union, something it has refused to do for more than 450 days, so that meaningful progress can be made to bargain a first contract in good faith.
What is outrageous to me is not only Starbucks anti-union activities and their willingness to break the law, it is their calculated and intentional efforts to stall, stall and stall. They understand that the turnover rate at Starbucks is high. They understand that if workers do not see success in getting a contract and improved wages they may get discouraged. So what Starbucks is doing is not only trying to break unions, but even worse. They are trying to break the spirit of workers who are struggling to improve their lives. And that is unforgivable.
LATEST NEWS
Global Sumud Flotilla Set for Latest Attempt to 'Break Israel's Illegal Siege on Gaza'
"Our boats carry more than aid. They carry a message—the siege must end. The greater danger lies not in confronting Israel at sea, but in allowing genocide to continue with impunity."
Aug 29, 2025
Palestine defenders are preparing for the latest—and largest—Freedom Flotilla Coalition mission to set sail for Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's US-backed genocidal siege on the embattled Palestinian territory.
Dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from as many as 44 nations are set to take part in the Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means "perseverance" in Arabic—as it attempts to run Israel's naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to the starving people of Gaza.
"We are a coalition of everyday people—organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers—who believe in human dignity and the power of nonviolent action," Global Sumud Flotilla's website explains.
In addition to "everyday people," flotilla participants include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, American actress Susan Sarandon, Irish actor Liam Cunningham, leftist Portuguese parliamentarian Mariana Mortágua, former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, and Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela.
Israel "is starving and killing the people of Gaza," Mandela—whose grandfather was not only a hero of his country's anti-apartheid struggle but also a staunch supporter of Palestinian liberation—said Friday on behalf of the South African flotilla delegation. "We are a diverse group of international activists calling for urgent global action to compel Israel to open Gaza's borders to aid and end its genocide of the Palestinian people."
"We ask that South Africans of conscience join us," he added. South Africa is leading an ongoing genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that is officially or informally supported by around two dozen nations.
Colau said earlier this week that "to end the genocide in Gaza is the duty of all of us, so we have to do what is in our power to do it if governments, including the government of Spain, do not do what they can to stop the criminal state of Israel."
Spain has joined the ICJ genocide case against Israel, has formally recognized Palestinian statehood and urged other nations to do so, and has taken significant steps toward an arms embargo on Israel.
"Although Spain has positioned itself more than other governments and recognized the Palestinian state, words are not enough when thousands of children are being killed," Colau said Friday in an interview with RTE.
At least 18,500 children are among the more than 63,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023—although the official Gaza Health Ministry figures are likely a vast undercount, according to peer-reviewed studies.
"This is my third attempt to try to sail with humanitarian aid to break Israel's illegal siege on Gaza and open up a humanitarian corridor," Thunberg, who is a member of the flotilla steering committee, told Middle East Eye Thursday.
"There have been 38 previous attempts just for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) and now with the Global Sumud Flotilla," Thunberg continued. "This is unprecedented. We are mobilizing people from all over the world with dozens of boats sailing from Barcelona first, and then more boats joining us from other ports around the Mediterranean Sea."
"We are doing this because we are facing a genocide," she added. "We are seeing people being deliberately deprived of their basic means to sustain life. And this is a continuation of the suffocating oppression that Palestinians have been living under for decades, and we simply have no choice if we have any sense of humanity left, we cannot just sit by and watch this unfolding."
The Gaza Famine—officially declared last week by the authoritative Integrated Food Security Phase Classification—has claimed at least hundreds of Palestinian lives in what experts say is an engineered effort by Israel. The International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza fueling the famine, list forced starvation, along with murder, as alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the pair.
Earlier this year, the FFC vessels Conscience, Madleen, and Handala each separately tried to break the blockade but were thwarted by Israeli forces in international waters, an apparent violation of maritime law. Flotilla activists were beaten, kidnapped, jailed, interrogated, and deported by Israel.
Fifteen years ago, Israeli forces raided one of the first FFC convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israeli attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
The Sumud Flotilla comes as Israeli forces ramp up Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign of conquest, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Gaza backed by the administration of US President Donald Trump. On Thursday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proposed the systematic annexation of Gaza over the coming months if Hamas keeps fighting, as well as the implementation of Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Israel's siege of Gaza has been in effect in varying degrees of severity since 2006 in response to Hamas' rise to power in the strip.
"The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger," a senior adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the time.
Now Palestinians are dying of hunger, and the world has increasingly had enough.
"Our boats carry more than aid," Global Sumud Flotilla said. "They carry a message—the siege must end. The greater danger lies not in confronting Israel at sea, but in allowing genocide to continue with impunity."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Economists Warn Trump Attack on Fed Will Further Jack Prices for Working Families
"Confidence that the Fed will respond wisely to future periods of macroeconomic stress... will evaporate," warned one economist.
Aug 29, 2025
Economists are warning that US President Donald Trump's efforts to meddle with the Federal Reserve are going to wind up raising prices even further on working families.
Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute, said on Wednesday that the president's efforts to strong-arm the US central bank into lowering interest rates by firing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook would backfire by accelerating inflation.
"The administration's efforts to politicize interest rates—an authoritarian tactic—will ultimately hurt American families by driving up costs," he said. "That helps explain why Fed independence has helped keep inflation under 3%, while, after years of political interference in their central bank, Turkey's inflation rate is over 33%."
Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said that the president's move to fire Cook "radically undermines what Trump says his own goal is: lowering U.S. interest rates to spur faster economic growth."
She then gave a detailed explanation for why Trump imposing his will on the Federal Reserve would likely bring economic pain.
"Presidential capture of the Fed would signal to decision-makers throughout the economy that interest rates will no longer be set on the basis of sound data or economic conditions—but instead on the whims of the president," she argued. "Confidence that the Fed will respond wisely to future periods of macroeconomic stress—either excess inflation or unemployment—will evaporate."
This lack of confidence, she continued, would manifest in investors in US Treasury bonds demanding higher premiums due to the higher risks they will feel they are taking when buying US debt, which would only further drive up the nation's borrowing costs.
"These higher long-term rates will ripple through the economy—making mortgages, auto loans, and credit card payments higher for working people—and require that rates be held higher for longer to tamp down any future outbreak of inflation," she said. "In the first hours after Trump's announcement, all of these worries seemed to be coming to pass."
Economist Paul Krugman, a former columnist for The New York Times, wrote on his personal Substack page Thursday that Trump's moves to take control of the Federal Reserve were "shocking and terrifying."
"Trump's campaign to take over monetary policy has shifted from a public pressure to personal intimidation of Fed officials: the attack on Cook signals that Trump and his people will try to ruin the life of anyone who stands in his way," he argued. "There is now a substantial chance that the Fed's independence, its ability to manage the nation's monetary policy on an objective, technocratic basis rather than as an instrument of the president's political interests and personal whims, will soon be gone."
The economists' warnings come as economic data released on Friday revealed that core inflation rose to 2.9% in August, which is the highest annual rate recorded since this past February. Earlier this month, the Producer Price Index, which is considered a leading indicator of future inflation, came in at 3.3%, which was significantly higher than economists' consensus estimate of 2.5%.
Data aggregated by polling analyst G. Elliott Morris shows that inflation is far and away Trump's biggest vulnerability, as American voters give him a net approval of -23% on that issue.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Texas House Passes Attack on Mailed Abortion Pills That 'Will Fuel Fear' Nationwide
"Texas: Land of the free! Also Texas: We want you to surveil your neighbor, see if they've missed their period, snoop through their trash and mail, and sue whoever sent them medication abortion."
Aug 29, 2025
Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday night advanced another anti-abortion bounty hunter bill, this one taking aim at medications mailed from states that support reproductive freedom so Texans can choose to end pregnancies.
House Bill 7 passed 82-48 along party lines during Texas' second special legislative session of the year. The proposal from state Rep. Jeff Leach (R-67) still needs approval from the Senate—which previously passed similar legislation—before it heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. He has signed various attacks on reproductive rights, including Senate Bill 8, a 2021 state law that entices vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week abortion ban.
Like S.B. 8, the new bill relies on lawsuits filed by private citizens. H.B. 7 would empower them to sue out-of-state healthcare providers, medication manufacturers, and anyone who mails or otherwise provides abortion pills to someone in the state for up to $100,000 in damages per violation—even if no abortion occurs. Under pressure from some anti-choice groups, Republicans added language allowing vigilantes to keep only $10,000; the rest would go to a charity they choose.
"It's designed to trap Texans into forced pregnancy," Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, told the Houston Chronicle. "Instead of fixing the crisis they (Texas lawmakers) manufactured, they're doubling down to punish anyone who dares to help a Texan. This bill is not about safety, it's about control."
Republicans in the Texas House have introduced another way to try to harm patients, providers, and manufacturers in the state. HB 7 would allow anyone to sue a manufacturer, distributor, or provider of medication abortion—even without proof of care being provided.
[image or embed]
— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproductivefreedomforall.org) August 29, 2025 at 10:34 AM
The bill is part of a broader effort to stop the flow of abortion medications—mifepristone and misoprostol—into states that have ramped up restrictions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversing Roe v. Wade in 2022.
As GOP lawmakers have worked to further restrict reproductive freedom, Democrat-controlled states have enacted "shield laws" to protect doctors and patients. Laws enabling telehealth abortions are key targets for Republican officials and far-right activists—including "anti-abortion legal terrorist" Jonathan Mitchell, the chief architect of S.B. 8 who's now representing a Texas man in a wrongful death case against a California doctor accused of providing pills that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy.
The New York Times reported that "supporters hope and opponents fear" H.B. 7 "will serve as a model for other states to limit medication abortion by promoting a rash of lawsuits against medical providers, pharmaceutical companies, and companies such as FedEx or UPS that may ship the drugs."
Supporters and opponents also anticipate court battles over the bill itself. "Texas is sort of the tip of the spear," Marc Hearron, the associate director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Times. "It's setting up a clash."
H.B. 7 is "pushing up against the limits of how much a state can control," Hearron added. "Each state can have its own laws, but throughout our history, we have been able to travel across the country, send things across the country."
Texas: Land of the free! Also Texas: We want you to surveil your neighbor, see if they've missed their period, snoop through their trash and mail, and sue whoever sent them medication abortion. https://bit.ly/4lM2sXF
[image or embed]
— Center for Reproductive Rights (@reprorights.org) August 28, 2025 at 4:45 PM
After Thursday's vote, Blair Wallace, policy and advocacy strategist on reproductive freedom at the ACLU of Texas, warned in a statement that "H.B. 7 exports Texas' extreme abortion ban far beyond state borders."
"It will fuel fear among manufacturers and providers nationwide, while encouraging neighbors to police one another's reproductive lives, further isolating pregnant Texans, and punishing the people who care for them," she said. "We believe in a Texas where people have the freedom to make decisions about our own bodies and futures."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular