Starbucks’ CEO joins in workers’ anti-bias training
Sessions involved up to 180,000 of chain’s employees and “didn’t shy away from the word race or racism.”
NEW YORK – At 8,000 Starbucks stores that closed Tuesday afternoon, emotions flowed amid the conversation about racial prejudice as employees gathered for anti-bias training.
“We didn’t shy away from the word race or racism. We went right to it,” said Les Fable, a Starbucks district manager in New York who said he has been on the receiving end of racial bias as an African American. “I lived some of those things. (We’re) sharing it with the rest of the company.”
The sessions lasted late into the afternoon — four hours of training that could be followed by more conversation. It was, at times, gut-wrenching.
Some employees wept at a session attended by Executive Chairman Howard Schultz. One woman, for instance, emotionally recalled growing up in South Africa under apartheid.
“It takes moral courage to do this,” Schultz said afterward.
The sessions involving up to 180,000 Starbucks employees follow the April arrests of two African-American men at a central-city Philadelphia cafe as they waited for a friend. A manager called police when they didn’t buy anything and had them arrested. They also were denied use of a restroom. The charges were dropped, and Starbucks apologized and ordered the afternoon of training.
On Friday, the two men arrested, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, visited Starbucks’ headquarters in Seattle. They met with Schultz and CEO Kevin Johnson, who, Schultz said, is
serving as a business mentor. They had gone to the Philadelphia Starbucks to meet with another man to talk about a real-estate deal.
Their experience reverberated through the company nationwide. In Milwaukee, passersby reflected on Starbucks’ training sessions outside a store near Red Arrow Park that had been the scene of a 2014 police shooting.
“Milwaukee is a city that has an issue with race,” Mohammad AbuLughod said Tuesday morning outside the Red Arrow store. “Everyone knows that. The glasses that we grow up with, we only see through them. A lot of people are not willing to take off those glasses. What this company is doing is letting people who are willing to listen is take those glasses off.”
In Phoenix, Starbucks barista Clark Ramos said he considers his location one of the least-prejudiced places he has ever worked. Nationally, two-thirds of the coffee giant’s employees are women and 43% are minorities, according to Starbucks. But he said the training is valuable.
“Overall, I’m glad Starbucks is taking the topic of racism head-on and making us connect with each other as people,” said Ramos, who has worked at Starbucks for two years. “Is this going to fix the problem? Of course not. Unfortunately, there will always be racist people as long as we as a society don’t talk about the problem.”
Starbucks has also taken a concrete policy step: This month, it changed its rules so restrooms are now available to non-customers.
“We want to lead the company and manage the company through the lens of humanity,” Schultz said. “That’s a very delicate balance.”