Starbucks to close ‘many more’ stores, Howard Schultz says in video leaked #Starbucks #closing #stores #Howard #Schultz #leaked #video #footage Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Starbucks announced the closure of 16 US stores this week due to health and safety concerns, and according to leaked videos from interim CEO Howard Schultz, these closures won’t be the last. The video footage of an internal meeting at Starbucks was initially obtained by the conservative Canadian blog, the Post Millennial, and shows Schultz talking about the problems his employees face, concluding that “this is just the beginning” and that there is ” much more” will be. Starbucks store closures are coming, including profitable stores.
“I’m surprised that one of our partners’ main concerns is their own personal safety. […] We are faced with things the stores are not built for,” he said, adding that the biggest security concerns are issues such as homelessness, drug use and crime in and around many Starbucks stores.
Schultz goes on to blame the local government for many of the health and safety issues that “have relinquished their responsibilities in fighting crime and tackling mental illness” and said “we will have to transform and modernize” to comply. to the changing needs of the customers, although he did not provide more detail in the images shown as to what those changes might be.
A Starbucks spokesperson confirmed that the video footage is authentic and was part of a larger, regular staff meeting as a follow-up to the letter announcing the impending store closures.
“We open and close stores regularly and are always looking for better ways to serve customers,” the Starbucks spokesperson said in a statement.
The 16 store closures all happen to be in cities run by Democratic leaders, though Schultz never made an explicit bipartisan political connection during his critical remarks. Two of the stores to close in Seattle had joined a union, and one of the Portland stores was soon to be holding a union vote.
“Every decision Starbucks makes must be viewed through the lens of the company’s unprecedented and malicious union campaign,” Starbucks union SBWorkers United said in a statement. “It is simply not credible for the company to claim that this was not a response to the growing union movement that was spreading across the country.”
While Starbucks did say it would transfer employees in soon-to-close locations to new Starbucks stores and reopen in “new locations with safer conditions,” employees and customers of the stores to be closed in the Los Angeles area were “stunned” at the upcoming closures, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“Over there [are] countless times I’ve been yelled at, cursed, thrown and harassed,” said one employee, who spoke to the Los Angeles Times on condition of anonymity because the staff were not allowed to talk to the press. The staff were given two options: either to be transferred or to resign. The Starbucks spokesperson clarified that the company is working hard to ensure that employees are relocated to nearby stores.
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