Starbucks shareholders push to oust board members over stalled union talks
Starbucks shareholders are pushing to remove two board members at the company who they argue have contributed to stalling the coffee chain’s long-fought-over union drive.The SOC Investment Group, Trillium Asset Management, Merseyside Pension Fund, the non-profit Shareholder Association for Research and Education (Share), and the New York state and New York City comptrollers wrote a letter to Starbucks shareholders to vote “no” on the re-election of board members Jørgen Vig Knudstorp and Beth Ford at Starbucks’s annual shareholders meeting on 25 March.More than 680 Starbucks stores have voted to form unions since the barista-led organizing campaign started in 2021.The union has reached 34 tentative agreements with Starbucks, but the company has not reached a single final agreement.Starbucks workers began an unfair labor practice strike at the coffee chain in November 2025, escalating up to the holidays in December 2025 with several thousand workers on strike.
The union has since tapered down the number of workers on strike and pushed campaigns for the public to pressure the company, with actions such as deleting the Starbucks app, until a first contract is reached.Brian Niccol, Starbucks’s CEO, pledged to “engage constructively and in good faith” when he took the top job in 2024.But critics argue the company has since gone back on those pledges.In their letter, the shareholders argue Knudstorp, former CEO of the Lego Group, and Ford, CEO of the Land O’Lakes agricultural cooperative, bear responsibility for Starbucks’s ongoing labor dispute.Knudstorp and Ford have “had labor relations, board structure, and investor engagement responsibilities over the relevant time period.
Shareholders should evaluate their performance against those responsibilities,” the shareholders wrote.Tejal Patel, executive director of the SOC Investment Group, a Starbucks shareholder affiliated with labor unions, said: “There was a shift in 2025 which raised renewed concerns for us.Labor disputes have continued.Bargaining has not produced a first contract, and risks associated with workforce relations have intensified rather than diminished.”“The sudden U-turn on labor relations oversight by Starbucks’ Board is inconsistent with the company’s turnaround strategy and commitments – and changes have not been explained to shareholders,” the shareholders wrote in the letter.
Two proxy firms have also warned Starbucks shareholders that the company may be neglecting financial and reputational risks from labor disputes.“There are ongoing controversies related to labor disputes and it is not clear that there is sufficient board oversight of the company’s management of labor relations,” stated Institutional Shareholder Services in their recommendations for cautionary support of the two board members.The proxy firm highlighted a recent $38.9m settlement Starbucks agreed to pay over New York City fair workweek laws, the largest in the city’s history.A leading proxy adviser, Glass Lewis, recommended voting no against the board members, citing, among its reasons, the dissolution of a Starbucks board committee to oversee labor relations.
That committee was formed in response to shareholder concerns in 2023 over the company’s handling of union campaigns,“You do not simply simplify oversight of a risk that’s getting worse,You should be strengthening it,” said Kyle Seeley, deputy director of corporate governance at the New York state common retirement fund during the webinar on the vote no campaign,Daisy Pitkin, director of Starbucks Workers United, said no proposals have been made by Starbucks since April 2025 after workers voted down Starbucks’s economic proposals,Pitkin said the union is looking for base wage increases, annual pay increases that don’t lag behind inflation, and a minimum of three baristas staffed in each store.
“We’d like to see a floor, a starting wage at $17 an hour,” said Pitkin,“Despite Starbucks claiming that baristas make $30 an hour, which they have said publicly, in 34 states, Starbucks workers start at $15,25, an hour, and in another nine states, they start at $16 or below, so we want to get more money into the pockets of these lowest paid baristas,”Jasmine Leli, a Starbucks barista in Buffalo, New York, where the union campaign at Starbucks began in 2021, said: “We continue to file unfair labor practices due to the ongoing union busting at the store level,We continue to work understaffed, which is extremely stressful.
We’re struggling to pay our bills.”Starbucks said they remain committed to bargaining and they claimed the shareholder proposal is similar to a previous failed effort.“The Starbucks Board has the necessary skills and experience to effectively oversee our strategy, including human capital management, which is vital to our ability to drive growth and deliver for our customers,” Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said in an email.“Our ongoing investments in the partner experience have enabled Starbucks to offer the best jobs in retail – pay and benefits average $30 an hour for hourly partners, turnover is far below the industry average, and more than a million people apply to work here every year.”
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