shareholder proposal (advisory) · 2023
Office of the New York City Comptroller and the New York City pension funds at Starbucks
Have the board commission and oversee an independent, third-party assessment of Starbucks' adherence to its stated commitments to workers' rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, covering management non-interference when employees form or join a union and the steps needed to remedy any practice found inconsistent with those commitments.
What happened
Result: Approved at the 23 March 2023 annual meeting as Proposal 8: 418,792,991 for, 386,056,422 against, 10,661,648 abstaining and 152,169,391 broker non-votes, which is 52.0 percent of the votes cast for and against.
Starbucks said in the same 8-K that it was already undertaking an independent third-party human rights impact assessment covering freedom of association and collective bargaining, and it created a board-level Environmental, Partner and Community Impact Committee to oversee labour relations while that audit ran. The committee was later dissolved under chief executive Brian Niccol, which brought a fresh proxy campaign in the 2026 season, reported in March 2026, against two directors by the SOC Investment Group with the New York City and New York State comptrollers and Trillium Asset Management; Starbucks proposed resuming in-person bargaining with Workers United on 30 March 2026. We did not open anything covering what happened after that date.
Who is involved
- Office of the New York City Comptroller and the New York City pension funds filer
- Merseyside Pension Fund (represented by PIRC) co-filer
- Starbucks Corporation company
What this campaign is about
- Right to work, just remuneration, equal pay, and to form and join trade unions Pivotal · Universal Declaration of Human Rights