Trouble brewing at Starbucks Coffee - working conditions of Guatemalan coffee pickers - Column

Progressive, The, March, 1995 by Mike Zielinski

Chicago

The fastest growing retailer of gourmet coffee in the United States is the target of a new campaign to win a living wage for Guatemalan coffee pickers.

Starbucks has fueled the explosive growth of coffee bars across the country. Its emerging coffee empire stretches from Boston to Seattle, with steady expansion through college campuses and the bookstore chain Barnes and Noble. Four-hundred stores currently serve up Starbucks Guatemalan coffee.

The coffee giant prides itself on practicing progressive capitalism, touting its employee-stock-ownership plan and health benefits for part-time workers in the United States, as well as good works for the Third World. Last year the company donated $100,000 to CARE for projects benefiting coffee-growing communities.

But coffee workers need a fair wage more than corporate handouts, say activists. "Workers earn two cents a pound for picking berries," says Eric Hahn of the Chicago-based U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project. "Starbucks turns around and sells a pound of Guatemalan coffee beans for $9."

Virtual slave conditions prevail on the majority of Guatemala's coffee plantations. The Labor Education Project is asking Starbucks to adopt a labor code that would raise wages, provide sanitary housing for workers, ensure minimal health and safety standards, bar child labor, end discrimination against women, and allow workers to unionize. Peace and justice organizations, religious groups, and Guatemala solidarity committees are participating in the campaign. Organizers highlight the hypocrisy of take-out cups bearing the slogan CARING FOR THOSE WHO GROW OUR COFFEE.

Starbucks downplays its influence over Guatemala's privately owned plantations. Growers, however, are susceptible to pressure from U.S. coffee consumers. Guatemala realized close to 40 percent of its foreign-exchange income from coffee sales and more than half of the beans are exported to the United States.

Labor Education Project organizers see the Starbucks campaign as a first step in holding international firms accountable for exploitative labor conditions abroad. While companies such as Reebok and Levi's have accepted codes of conduct for their foreign operations, no U.S. retailer in coffee requires a code for its suppliers.

For more than four months, Starbucks refused to meet with campaign organizers. In December, activists took their case to Starbucks' customers, leafleting at more than twenty coffee shops in thirteen cities. Within a week, the publicity-conscious company agreed to a meeting.

The Labor Education Project is asking coffee drinkers everywhere to pressure Starbucks to implement a code of conduct for the Guatemalan plantations that supply them. Contact: Howard Schultz, Chief Executive Officer, Starbucks Coffee Company, P.O. Box 34110, Seattle, WA 98124. Customer Relations: (800)447-1575.

For a campaign organizers kit, contact US/GLEP, 333 South Ashland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60607; (312)262-6502.