Response to Harris Mak’s blog.
The world largest coffeehouse company, Starbucks, is not as ethical as Mak mentioned. I agree that Starbucks does use fair trade coffee beans and its stance of political activities is ethical. However, behind the glossy facade of Starbucks stand many concerns from the public.
In 2012, Skynews reported that Starbucks paid no income tax to UK since 2009. The whole UK was shocked by this tax scandal. How could a giant business has not pay a penny in three years? According to my research, Starbucks paid tax about 8.6 million pounds when their sales was 3 billion pounds. However, Starbucks reported that they have earned zero profit in UK despite their sales was 1.2 billion pounds in three years. A tax manager said what Starbucks has done was that they have shifted their money out of UK in order to mitigate the tax. This behavior is absolute unethical as a company.
Moreover, Starbucks has not paid a livable wage for its baristas, the wages they earned was only 6.25 dollars per hour. Besides, their working hours are really fluctuating due to the stores’ weekly sales and no one can get a guaranteed number of working hours, which shows Starbucks has ignored the rights of employees. A company‘s responsibility for its workers is a big part of its CSR.
Starbucks has the incredible power that can make the world a better place, how to use this power decides whether the impact is positive or negative. I hope other businesses can learn some lessons from Starbucks and do the right thing for the World.
References:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-23019514
http://zh.scribd.com/doc/102666885/The-Truth-Behind-Starbucks#scribd
https://blogs.ubc.ca/harrismak/2015/11/14/starbucks-a-leader-in-csr/
