A TikToker accused Starbuck’s new olive oil drink—which has gone viral many times for all the wrong reasons—of being a PR stunt to distract from the CEO’s anti-union efforts.
The video was aptly posted by @aflcio, otherwise known as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the country’s largest federation of unions. The organization represents 12.5 million workers across 60 national and internation labor unions, according to its website.
The TikTok starts off with a stitch of another creator asking people to “please” tell them the Starbucks olive oil drinks are “a joke.”
“This cannot be real,” the creator said.
A person who appears to be a member of the AFL-CIO stitched her theory in response. She pointed out that it is “very interesting” that Starbucks is pushing the “disgusting” olive oil drinks the same week the company’s former CEO and co-founder, Howard Schultz, testified before the United States Senate, “blatantly lying under oath” about his union-busting and violation of federal labor law.
Schultz denies that any laws have been broken.
Since the first Starbucks unionized back in late 2022, nearly 300 Starbucks stores have also unionized. None, however, have been able to negotiate a collective-bargaining contract and the company has closed some pro-union locations, CBS News reported.
Starbucks has “repeatedly” broken labor laws by firing pro-union workers, interrogating them, threatening to rescind benefits if employees organized, a spokesperson from the National Labor Relations Board told CBS News.
“Starbucks has become the most aggressive union-busting company in America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said during a congressional hearing on allegations of Starbuck’s union-busting.
@aflcio #stitch with @_.partycitykazoo._ The math ISN’T mathing, and it’s a clear PR strategy from Starbucks to distract from how they’re blatantly breaking the law. More clips from today’s insane hearing coming soon. #unionstrong #laborunions #aflcio #starbucksunion ♬ original sound – AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO union worker said the company knew the new beverage would get a lot of online reactions because it looked gross. She inserted a photo of the iced version of the drink that looks like a regular iced latte but with a thickened layer of oil sitting at the top. Definitely not an appetizing look.
The union member compared the alleged PR move to Gwenyth Paltrow’s strategy in which she went viral for talking about how she barely eats the same week she appeared in court for her ski accident.
“The math ISN’T mathing, and it’s a clear PR strategy from Starbucks to distract from how they’re blatantly breaking the law,” the caption read.
The video has more than 170,000 views and nealry 200 comments.
Several people were in agreement with the person’s theory.
“Like Facebook rebranding to Meta as soon as the whistleblower stuff came out,” a person said.
“Literally every time something viral happens I assume it’s a corporate cover-up for something,” a commenter added.
“I’ve never seen them push drinks this much that aren’t even in all of the us stores, there’s no reason for it except this,” another said.
Other commenters joked about how this potential PR move went down behind the scenes.
“It’s very funny to think of someone in starbucks pr being like ‘we’ve prepared, and it is time. jerry, bring out the olive oil drinks’” one person commented.
The Daily Dot reached out to AFL-CIO and Starbucks for comment via email.
