Soft on Starbucks.

I am deeply disturbed by your latest issue (Spring 2004) I read the article about Starbucks by the alleged "union organizer," Kim Fellner. So she wants to write "dangerously?" Well she has written such a puff piece about this huge transnational operation as if all she had in mind was job security in the fervently anti-labor capitalist market. How juvenile is it to hype this mega-business because they hire people of color at $7.50 an hour, while their CEO is paid yearly close to $2.5 million--with stock options of many millions of dollars more? And the subtext that since Starbucks is a welcome convenience for her, perhaps owner "benevolence" is about as good as workers organized to protect themselves? Is that the "paradox" for Fellner and for you?

Howard Shultz is also an ardent supporter financially and in public of the illegal and bloody expansionist policies of Israel, an inherently apartheid nation that undermines everything you purport to stand for.

I don't think Starbucks is a friend of communities of color, or a friend of your readers.

Patricia de Larios

I was intrigued and then disappointed with your recent article, "The Starbucks Paradox." As the organizer of the Starbucks campaign for Global Exchange, I can attest that our work has been greatly misrepresented in Fellner's article. Starbucks is the undisputed leader in the specialty coffee field and one of the largest coffee sellers in the US. However, four years after initially agreeing to offer Fair Trade--an agreement that was supposed to begin with a 5 percent volume goal-Starbucks still only sells about 1 percent Fair Trade. Meanwhile, in the last three years, the international price of coffee has plummeted from around $1 a pound to about 50 cents--with farmers gaining merely 20 cents of that. That means farmers are suffering increased impoverishment, malnutrition, and losing their traditional lands all over Latin America, Africa, and Asia. On the other hand, Fair Trade Certified coffee means community empowerment and economic fairness for half a million farmers in hundreds of cooperatives in over 20 countries around the world. Where is the class and race analysis when the means of production--the labor of the black, brown, and Asian coffee farmers who make less than a dollar a day and yet make Starbucks rich--is given only one cursory paragraph in a 2600 word article?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Deborah James

Global Economy Director

Global Exchange

KIM FELLNER RESPONDS:

Thanks to all who responded. We outed many Starbucks aficionados--both the defiant and closeted varieties. Others invoked the Evil Empire. So, let me keep the dialogue going with a few additional thoughts and provocations.

First, I have real respect for the work of Global Exchange and the global justice movement, of which I consider myself a part. I believe that fair trade campaigns pressured Starbucks to rethink its coffee buying strategies. Furthermore, as the article notes, Starbucks has tested out a number of other avenues-in addition to fair trade-to increase and guarantee coffee prices for growers. Since the article was written, Starbucks has announced a new Starbucks Coffee Agronomy Company in Costa Rica and a one million dollar investment in the Calvert Foundation for loans to fair trade coffee growers. I hope Global Exchange and other colleagues will help me assess whether or not these efforts are working.

Again, a root issue here is Starbucks' inclination toward paternalism,. They often feel their own solutions will be better than the ones offered by unions and collaborative efforts. This makes me uneasy; we saw what happened to the benevolent paternalists of Silicon Valley when the sector hit hard times, and it wasn't good. However, we also need to honestly evaluate the extent to which their solutions succeed, or highlight our own weaknesses. Are we really saying all corporate innovation and experimentation is bad?

In short, I'm pushing us to take a look at the knee-jerk components of our own ideologies. It has been a tactic of both unions and the Left to target friendlier, and often smaller, corporations to achieve wins and set standards. However, in the long run, that has caused companies with the best standards to cave in, as they are squeezed by the Wal-Marts of the world (the long, sad struggle of Levi Strauss comes to mind). Consider that the current price for coffee on the world market is about 50 cents per pound, while Starbucks pays an average of $1.20. Consider that Starbucks has 78,000 employees while Wal-Mart exceeds 1.5 million. I think we should push Starbucks to do the right thing-but push even harder to tackle the really bad guys, where the values divide is so much sharper.

In a way, our approach to this subject reminds me of the Nader presidential campaigns. Sure, Nader is more ideologically pure than the Democrats, yet to vote for him causes the greatest harm to the poor and disenfranchised on whose side we purport to be. My friend in the international labor movement (and no friend of Starbucks), wryly suggests, "The only thing worse than being exploited by a multinational is not being exploited by a multinational." For many folks, both here and abroad, these companies provide a living, where marginal is often better than none. And Starbucks does better than most.

It may not be the world we envision, but it is the world we live in. We need to look at our competing principles and reassess our priorities.