IN NOVEMBER 2021, Victoria Conklin, a 23-year-old shift supervisor at a Starbucks near Buffalo, was talking to Rossann Williams, then the company's president of North American retail. Workers at three nearby stores had recently petitioned to become the chain's only unionized locations in the United States, but Conklin's hadn't. Williams wanted to keep it that way.
As the company wrapped up its anti-union campaign, Williams told Conklin that a "special guest" was coming in for a big event. "It's Howard Schultz," Conklin responded. "Don't act like it's Taylor Swift or something."
Almost four decades before, Schultz had joined Starbucks as an operations and marketing executive. In 1987, he bought the company for $3.8 million, serving as CEO as it grew into the world's largest coffee business. Starbucks is now worth more than $110 billion, with more employees than Iceland has people. Schultz stepped down, for the third and final time, in March. With a net worth of nearly $4 billion (including a superyacht worth at least $100 million), he's not the richest tycoon of his generation, but he is emblematic of its self-satisfied paternalism.
In running Starbucks, Schultz claims he set out to protect people like his blue-collar dad, who was "not respected and dignified and did not have any value.' The threat posed by a union, then, was as much psychic as economic: By organizing, his employees were rejecting the protector who Schultz's father never had and who Schultz thought he'd become by providing benefits like health care for part-time workers. Organizers' efforts undermined the good billionaire's faith in the frictionless existence he thought he'd built, buoyed by global adoration, immense wealth, and the gratitude of the workers who created it.
Denne historien er fra May/June 2023-utgaven av Mother Jones.
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Denne historien er fra May/June 2023-utgaven av Mother Jones.
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In the Name of the Mother - How Shyamala Gopalan Harris raised a presidential contender
Shyamala Gopalan Harris did not believe in coddling. Pay her daughters, Kamala and Maya, an allowance for doing chores? “If you do the dishes, you should get two dollars,” scoffed the woman who this past summer, almost two decades after we spoke, would launch a million coconut memes. “You ate from the damn dishes!” Reward the future vice president of the United States—and possible future president—for good grades? Ridiculous. “What does that tell you?” her mother chided. “It says, ‘You know, I really thought you were stupid. Oh, you surprised Mommy!’ No.”
Kill the Messenger - The anti-disinformation field is retreating under attack.
A few months ago, a man crawling along a rooftop in Pennsylvania tried to murder Donald Trump at a campaign rally. Hours later, press releases started to circulate, from analysts, think tanks, politicians, and pundits, all offering to cut through the swell of confusion and misinformation.
Food + Health / Global Warning - Why Project 2025 is an environmental catastrophe in the making
When President Joe Biden took office, Democrats held a slim majority in the House of Representatives and a single-vote edge in the Senate. Despite the monumental odds, he has presided over the most productive presidential term for climate action in American history. Under Biden’s direction, the federal government took up the arduous task of incorporating climate considerations into scores of administrative operations and procedures. The epa cracked down on superpollutants and issued stricter emissions regulations for passenger vehicles. The Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate spending bill Congress has ever passed, brings the nation closer to its goal of slashing carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Trumpnesia - To get a second chance, Trump needs voters to forget his disastrous presidency.
One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
WHEN IN DROUGHT
This obscure yet adaptable grain could be a healthy staple for a warming planet.
BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
Taking the Fifth For a glimpse of the Supreme Court after a second Trump term, look at the radical circuit court that's already driving America to the right.
Imagine obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage.
THE ARCHITECT
TRUMP WANTS TO BE KING. RUSS VOUGHT HAS A PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Losing Faith
As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
