Board members Jørgen Vig Knudstorp and Beth Ford face scrutiny for the coffee chain’s ongoing labor dispute
Starbucks shareholders are pushing to remove two board members at the company who they argue have contributed to stalling the coffee chain’s long-fought-over union drive.
The SOC Investment Group, Trillium Asset Management, Merseyside Pension Fund, the non-profit Shareholder Association for Research and Education (Share), and the New York state and New York City comptrollers wrote a letter to Starbucks shareholders to vote “no” on the re-election of board members Jørgen Vig Knudstorp and Beth Ford at Starbucks’s annual shareholders meeting on 25 March.
More than 680 Starbucks stores have voted to form unions since the barista-led organizing campaign started in 2021. The union has reached 34 tentative agreements with Starbucks, but the company has not reached a single final agreement.
Starbucks workers began an unfair labor practice strike at the coffee chain in November 2025, escalating up to the holidays in December 2025 with several thousand workers on strike. The union has since tapered down the number of workers on strike and pushed campaigns for the public to pressure the company, with actions such as deleting the Starbucks app, until a first contract is reached.
