Op-Ed: Starbucks Execs Pull Out of Seattle to Exploit Regressive Tennessee

Much hay has been made of Nashville’s “friendly business climate” after Starbucks planted a corporate office set to have room for 2,000 workers in the Tennessee capitol, while shortly thereafter laying off 252 workers in Seattle. But the flowers being given to Nashville overlook some serious thorns, and they betray a concerning disappearance of any semblance of corporate social responsibility, which major companies used to at least make attempts to display.

In 2015 Indiana passed legislation to allow private businesses to discriminate against gay people. That action ignited a corporate campaign with threats by major corporations to withhold investments, events, and job creation in Indiana. The Indiana Legislature quickly reversed itself. Those corporate statements sounded good. In retrospect they were purely transactional, fed by corporate consideration of the impact of consumer boycotts on profit-taking.

Now the era of hate has overtaken any apparent corporate goodwill. So while the Seattle Times lauds the “business climate” of Tennessee, they omit the reality of the southern political economy on the health and wellbeing of workers, women, African Americans, democracy, and economic security. Here are some answers to the Seattle Times question, “What’s Nashville have that we ain’t got in Seattle?”

A lack of reproductive rights

Tennessee rolling out new Jim Crow

Tennessee has more gun deaths, minimal gun control

Tennessee denies basic worker rights

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Starbucks CEOs always had a foot out the door

It should be no surprise that Starbucks is leaving our city for Tennessee. Starbucks' CEO, Brian Niccol, has never lived in Seattle. He resides in Newport Beach, California and commutes three days a week to Seattle using a company-owned jet. Starbucks has set up a remote office for Niccol in California to enable his hybrid work arrangement. He made 6,666 times more than his workers in 2024. He received more than $97.8 million in total compensation that year.

https://www.theurbanist.org/op-ed-starbucks-execs-pull-out-of-seattle-to-exploit-regressive-tennessee/