Howard Schultz

Longtime Starbucks leader Howard Schultz is stepping down from the company’s board of directors. Schultz is credited for transforming the Seattle-based business into the coffee giant it’s known as today.

Starbucks plans to spend $450 million next year to make its North American stores more efficient and less complex. Among the things driving the revamp is an ongoing unionization effort, which Starbucks opposes. More than 230 U.S. stores have voted to unionize since late last year.

Starbucks has named a longtime PepsiCo executive as its new CEO. The coffee giant said Thursday that Laxman Narasimhan will join Starbucks on Oct. 1 after relocating from London to Seattle, where Starbucks is based. He will work closely with Starbucks' interim CEO, Howard Schultz, through April 1, when he will assume the CEO role and join the company’s board. Narasimhan was most recently CEO of Reckitt, a U.K.-based consumer health and nutrition company that makes Lysol cleaner and Enfamil infant formula, among other products. Reckitt had announced Narasimhan’s surprise departure earlier Thursday.

The National Labor Relations Board says Starbucks is violating U.S. labor law by withholding pay hikes and other benefits from stores that have voted to unionize. The labor board’s Seattle office filed the complaint late Wednesday.

It’s become a common sight: jubilant Starbucks workers celebrating after successful votes to unionize at dozens of U.S. stores. But when the celebrations die down, a daunting hurdle remains. To win the changes they seek, like better pay and more reliable schedules, unionized stores must sit down with Starbucks and negotiate a contract. It’s a painstaking process that can take years.

Starbucks’ sales climbed to record levels in its fiscal second quarter, but its profits took a hit from climbing labor and ingredient costs. The Seattle coffee company, which welcomed back former CEO Howard Schultz last month as its interim leader, introduced new pay raises and other benefits to improve its employee experience and head off a growing unionization movement.

Howard Schultz rejoins Starbucks as interim CEO as the company faces multiple challenges, including an unprecedented wave of unionization at stores across the country.

From the time he bought Starbucks in 1987 to the time he stepped down as chairman in 2018, Howard Schultz successfully fought attempts to unionize Starbucks’ U.S. stores. But Schultz, who will step in as Starbucks’ interim chief executive in April, never confronted a unionization movement as big and fast-growing as the current one.

Demand for food assistance has surged this year as many people have lost their jobs.The Schultz Family Foundation, which was started by former Starbucks…

The controversy continues to swirl around former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and his possible run for president as an independent. Protestors turned out…