Starbucks' sickening healthcare and business practices

June 10, 5:10 PMFederal Way Independent ExaminerBoye' A. Coker

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    I have always heard from both current and former employees of Starbucks about the company's cut-throat practices, from its healthcare provisions to its overall labor and business practices in the United States.
    Recently, the Howard Schultz led coffee giant has seen its earnings tumble more as a result of what I would call brand and locational cannibalization, as well as competition from brand substitutes, than the general quality of its product. Starbucks is also very much "working behind the scenes" to work against the passing of the Employee Free Choice Act and the company's recent financial struggles has also seen it consistently play a game of Russian Roulette  with the health insurance coverage of its employees by systematically having them lose their coverage due to "not having worked enough hours" to maintain their healthcare coverage; a tactic and underhanded business practice perfected by the Wal-Mart Corporation.
    In this video piece (below), a former Starbucks employee talks about how he had worked for the company for over a year and in addition to the prohibitive cost of having it when he had enough hours to maintain the healthcare coverage, he could not make use of it when he became sick as he had not worked enough required hours to keep the coverage. He further intimated as to how he and other Starbucks employees would have their hours cut before the end of the quarter so they would not be able to acquire the threshold hours needed to maintain their healthcare coverage. This is a practice that another major corporation, Wal-Mart (as I had alluded to earlier) has used over the years and many companies, even before the current economic downturn, as they looked for ways to "streamline costs" (while maintaining outrageous executive compensations).
    Rather than engage in more fiscally sound business practices based on a sound business model, they have for the most part resorted to the "Wal Mart" model." It seems lately that everything has gone South for Howard Schultz. From the ill-fated ownership of the Seattle Sonics (we won't get into that I assure you as we won't have enough time) to the prohibitive cost of the coffee and adjacency products in this tough economic times, as well as the rather ridiculous business model of brand saturation (in their case more like over-saturation), he seems to have lost the touch and may be, just may be, the plot as well.