The Denver Post April 12, 2002

Starbucks shares cup of goodwill

Exec tells DU students, businesses the value of social responsibility

By Bruce Finley, Denver Post International Affairs Writer,

Starbucks Coffee executive Dennis Stefanacci, senior vice  president of social responsibility, sipped from a mug of Ethiopian  on Thursday as a public relations entourage watched in one of  Starbucks' 60 Denver-area cafes. Profits are up. Vandalism is down. Plans call for nearly doubling Starbucks' reach by 2006 with  10,000 cafes across 60 countries. And fellow corporate leaders around the nation regularly quiz  Stefanacci on how Starbucks - once a target for anti-globalization  demonstrators - weathered the storm.

In Denver on Thursday,  Stefanacci gave speeches on business ethics to University of  Denver students, then to a panel of Colorado business leaders. The message: 'Corporate social responsibility adds value to a  company.' Not that all protesters are leaving the coffee giant alone.  

The Organic Consumers Association recently completed a week-long  leaflet campaign against Starbucks. But leaders of the movement that blamed Starbucks for the  plight of millions of coffee farmers mired in some of the planet's  worst poverty say they now are broadening their campaign to target  major 'can' coffee companies such as Maxwell House and Folgers.  The companies supply roughly two-thirds of the coffee Americans  drink and generally pay farmers less than half the $ 1.20-a-pound  Starbucks pays for coffee beans.

Latest tactics: Activists enter grocery stories and plaster  red-white-and-black stickers on Folgers cans. The labels contrast  a chief executive's $ 37 million salary with coffee farmer earnings  of around $ 300. 'If you're trying to help the growers at the bottom, you've  got to affect the big volume buyers,' said Kevin Danaher,  co-founder of San Francisco-based Global Exchange, a human rights  organization that orchestrated protests against Starbucks.

Starbucks still will face pressure to do more for farmers,  Danaher said, because critics view Starbucks as a suspect in a  worldwide struggle. 'Are we going to subordinate life values to commerce? Or are  we going to subordinate commerce to life values?' Danaher asked.  Yet rather than picket, critics now are inclined to forge  alliances with Starbucks executives who 'are finally starting to  see the light.' A movement for social justice in the world economy is growing  on university campuses. Famed financier George Soros calls for an  infusion of morality into commerce. A 1999 Environics Ltd. poll of  23,000 citizens in 23 countries found 90 percent want companies to  focus on more than profitability. In response, some companies are reviewing their operations,  from low-wage factories they rely on in Asia to flexible  scheduling for workers at home. In Denver, corporate leaders who listened to Stefanacci said  they are socially responsible, too. For example, Storage  Technology Corp. gave away more than $ 9 million to help  communities over the past decade, said Barba Hickman, director of  corporate relations.

Workers benefit from a health club, doctor,  day-care center, even a hairstylist at the corporate complex in  Louisville. The challenge is changing public perception amid revelations  of the Enron scandal, said Bruce Hutton, professor of marketing at  the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business. Enron executives, too, made the rounds of lingo-laden  business ethics conferences telling their story, Hutton said. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the percentage  of companies paying severance after layoffs decreased from 56  percent in 1988 to 36 percent in 1999. 'There's a global attitude of skepticism and cynicism of the  underlying motives of large corporations,' Hutton said.  'Corporations are having to learn a new way of conducting  themselves. The new way of doing business is that you've got to  pay attention to more than the short-term quarterly earnings.  You've got to help society.'