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Starbucks Blues Lean times and labor pains are tarnishing the coffee giant’s image. By Liza Featherstone Posted Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 9:12pm
Fall is pumpkin-latte season for those who can still afford to indulge, but for Starbucks workers, it's been a season of discontent. The coffee giant has recently responded to hard times with scheduling changes that are likely to inflict misery on its employees. These policies seem sharply at odds with Starbucks' reputation for social responsibility but make sense in the context of the company's record as an employer. Curiously, the coffee retailer's benevolent image seems most fragile at the moment that the company's best days seem to be receding into the past.
The store atmosphere remains suffused with NPR-style high-mindedness. A fact sheet from Good magazine about the U.S. economy's woes is prominently displayed, as is Helene Cooper's memoir about her childhood in Liberia. So it's fitting that when Starbucks introduced a new human-resources strategy two weeks ago, a new company manual for managers--obtained and shared with TBM by the Starbucks Workers Union, a group of employees pressing for better wages and working conditions-- explained the change in lofty terms, insisting that it was "a philosophy, not a program."
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