In an apparent last-ditch attempt to convince workers to vote against a union campaign at three Starbucks stores in the Buffalo area, Howard Schultz, the company’s former CEO and largest shareholder, gave a speech to workers that drew parallels between working at his company and the experiences of prisoners in rail cars headed to Nazi concentration camps in Poland and Germany.
Schultz noted that in the rail cars, only a few prisoners received blankets and had to share them with five people. Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel zt”l, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Mir Yerushalayim, told Schultz the story on a trip to Israel and said that Schultz should share his blanket, he said.
“Not everyone, but most people shared their blanket with five other people,” Schultz, who noted that he is Jewish before sharing the story, said. “So much of that story is threaded into what we’ve tried to do at Starbucks is share our blanket.”

The metaphor, seemingly, was an attempt to explain that Starbucks has built an unparalleled corporate culture over the last 50 years that both he and employees could be proud of. During the 45-minute speech, Schultz lamented the state of politics and also talked about innovations in coffee making and his vision for employees. (Schultz has shared this anecdote when speaking with shareholders.)
He mentioned Starbucks is working on “A completely new cold beverage station to make life easier because 50-60 percent of our customers are into cold brew,” he said. “We’re investing ahead of the curve to make sure we get this right. The American dream? What does it mean? Is it still alive, given the backdrop of our politics and hatred on social media that exists, the loss of faith and confidence in what we stand for. The lack of civility among our politicians in Washington. I have great faith in the American people. We’ve been through worse as a country. We are going to navigate through this. We’re going to come out the other side. I promise that Starbucks is going to be one of the companies that people point to and say, ‘They got it right. They got it right.’”

A Starbucks spokesperson declined to comment on Schultz’s speech but directed us to a page it set up about the speech.

 
The spokesperson also pointed out that Schultz told the blanket story before, in a March 2016 speech to shareholders about “the American dream.”
Schultz flew in to Buffalo to give a speech to unionizing workers at a Hyatt Regency Hotel on Oct. 6. Schultz’s event was optional, but Starbucks cancelled work so that employees could attend.
In his 45-minute speech, Schultz did not directly reference the union, but repeatedly alluded to the ongoing union drive by referencing workplace issues at the unionizing Starbucks stores. Read more at Vice.com.
{Matzav.com}