Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowStarbucks said Monday it will pay the travel expenses for U.S. employees to access abortion and gender-transition procedures if those services aren’t available within 100 miles of a worker’s home.
The Seattle coffee giant said it will also make the travel benefit available to the dependents of employees who are enrolled in Starbucks’ health care plan. Starbucks has 240,000 U.S. employees. It was not immediately clear what percentage of them are enrolled in the company’s health care plan.
Starbucks is among the most high-profile companies to adopt a travel benefit in the wake of a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court which would abolish the nationwide right to abortion.
“Regardless of what the Supreme Court ends up deciding, we will always ensure our partners have access to quality health care,” Sara Kelly, Starbucks acting executive vice president of partner resources, wrote in a letter to employees.
Amazon is also covering up to $4,000 in travel and lodging expenses for employees seeking non-life-threatening medical treatments, including abortions and gender-transition procedures. According to messages sent to staff, the benefit has been in place since the beginning of this year and applies if the procedure is not available within within 100 miles of an employee’s home.
Tesla also said earlier this month it would cover travel costs for employees seeking out-of-state abortions. Some companies, including Levi Strauss & Co., Yelp and Citigroup, have pledged to pay travel costs for Texas employees who seek abortions, in response to a 2021 Texas law banning abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy.
But many other companies, including Walmart and Facebook, have stayed silent on the hot-button issue for now.
Starbucks didn’t immediately say whether the travel benefit would be automatically extended to stores that have voted to unionize. At least 69 of the company’s U.S. stores have voted to unionize since the end of 2021, and many more have petitioned the federal government to hold union elections. Starbucks opposes unionization.
Earlier this month, Starbucks angered labor organizers when it announced enhanced pay and benefits for workers at its non-union stores. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said at the time that the company isn’t legally allowed to offer benefits at union stores, since those stores must negotiate their own contracts.
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Another good reason to NOT partake of Starbuck’s over-priced, over-hyped products. Disgraceful. Ditto Levis, Yelp, Citigroup, Amazon, Tesla, et al.
And we are [justifyably] shocked at the horror of the massacre in Buffalo over the weekend and wonder when life began to be so cheapened. Look to Roe vs. Wade for a good start; a culture cannot slaughter 62,000,000 innocents and counting and not expect life to be cheapened for the convenience of selfish and/or demented people. The chickens are coming home to roost.
What a stupid and pandering headline. Spare me your abortion opinions. A deliberate “leak” on a policy that may or may not take place and will take years to sort out. Starbucks is using a very serious issue to glibly score points with the woke crowd. It’s gross and vile. Shoutout to the “journalists” for using it to sell some clicks
Exactly right.
Starbucks panders to the Woke crowd.
That’s why I stopped buying Starbucks coffee.
They treat their workers like blind lost puppies.
I am glad to see Starbucks is doing the right thing by covering the cost of essential healthcare for its employees. I also would like to see what all the people who are so concerned about forcing an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy in the name of the unborn are doing for all the millions of hungry, abused, and neglected born children.
I actually don’t drink Starbucks very often (their coffee is mediocre), but apparently neither do the people complaining about this healthcare policy. Still, I am glad to see them doing the right thing by supporting their employees.
Christopher B: There are plenty of people waiting to adopt newborns and give them a life if their mother doesn’t want them, or doesn’t feel she can afford to raise a baby. Spare me the nonsense of “forcing” anybody to raise a child they do not want; it is simply untrue. What are people like me doing? Financially supporting the many Women’s Care Centers that offer appropriate counseling and support for women with unwanted pregnancies.
‘Too bad you are so blind as to not draw a straight line between legally killing innocent children in the womb and the increasing level of disrespect for human life seen every morning on the TV news of the previous night’s assaults/murders/etc. in Indianapolis.
A clearly decadent company. Another great reason to never shadow there door to say the least of their overpriced average coffee
Yes, if only the people outraged about abortions were as outraged about violence that leaves children without fathers or mothers or parents without children.
If only they fought against guns as much anger as they fought against abortions.
If only they cared as much about the born as the unborn.
If only they fought for people of all ages to have effective health care and just not the elderly.
If only they saw women as equals, as human beings, and not just as subservient baby delivery devices devoid of even the ability to use birth control.
If only those folks had something to offer more than just some diapers and thoughts & prayers.
If only.
Bob P., a little research will reveal that there are hundreds of thousands of children in the foster care system in the U.S. and many more in the homes of parents who either cannot or will not properly care for them. If it was so easy for a child to be put in a loving adopted home, then every child who needed good adoptive parents would have them. They do not.
And, yes, when it is *not* your body carrying something growing inside of it for nine months, then it is not your business to tell the person what she should do with it. As was David Barnhart said, ” ‘the unborn’ are a convenient group of people to advocate for.”
And this is because they do not demand anything from you, but still allow you to feel good about yourself without doing any of the real hard work of building a relationship with a person who can talk back or having to inconvenience yourself very much.
I am glad you give money to the Women’s Care Centers. And, that is the *very least* you should be doing. I hope you are also giving your time, energy, money, love, support, care, and concern for all the other people in your life, your neighborhood, your city, your nation, and the world who need it–including the sick, elderly, the incarcerated, the poor, the immigrant, those suffering in foreign lands, etc.
Also, murders and assaults happened in Indianapolis and throughout the U.S. even when abortion was illegal throughout the nation. One of the cruelest, most vicious and notorious murders of a child happened right here in Indianapolis (Sylvia Likens) when abortion was very much illegal. The current increase in assaults and murders and other crimes in the city does have a straight line to causes, but none of them are abortion, rather the line can be drawn to the wide availability of guns, poverty, racism, and a lack of access to quality education and job opportunities.
Nice try on the retort, Christopher B. You are so righteous, aren’t you? Why, if everyone thought like you, the world would be perfect in less than 24 hours, wouldn’t it?
Answer me this: Why is the Women’s Care Center at 86th and Georgetown Road a bright, cheery, open place, inviting to all walk-ins, whereas the Planned Parenthood butcher mill right next door is camouflaged by high walls and shrubbery with directions for “customers” (cash in advance only, please, no checks or credit cards) to park and enter in the rear, out of sight of Georgetown Road? You know, if what they were doing there was making such a positive contribution to society, why does it need to be hidden?
If you had a business that required such secrecy and would not accept checks or credit cards for your “services,” wouldn’t it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, you were doing something inherently WRONG?
Bob P., you apparently couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say in response to my “retort,” so you have resort to making silly comments. Planned Parenthood takes all the security and privacy measures you mention because of so-called “pro-life” terrorists who threaten their healthcare practitioners with death (how very “pro-life”) and harass the women seeking their healthcare services.
And, you are the one criticizing others for being self righteous? Perhaps, a moment of self-reflection is in order for you.
There goes my business, not that I bought much there anyway because I think their coffee is terrible.