Mr. Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, spoke about the challenges he faced returning to the company's helm in the face of growing team member dissatisfaction and China's evolving role in global business.
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After six years of retirement, Howard Schultz returned to a senior position at Starbucks in April to try to ease growing concerns from company employees about resisting union efforts to organize.
He also returned because he said the country was facing a "crisis of capitalism" and believed leadership was needed to "reinvent the role and responsibility of public corporations," he told the New York Times DealBook. on Thursday.
This quote has been edited and shortened for clarity.
I came back to rediscover the roles and responsibilities of public companies in a time of cultural and political change in the crisis of capitalism - the needs and demands of workers in today's companies.
I don't want to be critical, but I have to be honest and say that the government has failed people in many ways. For example, if you called thousands of salaried workers today and asked them about economic mobility and, more specifically, state pledges, they would most of the time say I can't. And sadly, if you ask people who are black or tan, they will indeed say that most of it is not available to me.
Looking back, Starbucks created comprehensive health insurance for our employees 25 years before the Affordable Care Act. Equity in the form of stock options for everyone, including part-time employees. Free college education. We could go on and on, but the truth is that these benefits, while they may be significant, are not good enough for today's workers, especially since Gen Z has a different perspective on the world. And also because the government didn't give them the path they thought they deserved.
Unfortunately, Starbucks turned out to be a proxy for what was happening. We're right in the middle. If a company as progressive as Starbucks, which has done so much and is ranked in the 100th percentile across our industry for our employees, could be threatened by a third party, that would mean any company in America could do it.
