Whole Foods Market and Starbucks are involved in a controversy over its employees’ right to unionize. The battle heats up as the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act makes its way thorough congress. Business interests have launched a campaign denouncing the proposal as “undemocratic” while union backers are using social media like the web site Brave New Films to portray the companies as anti-union.

Josh Harkinson is a reporter for Mother Jones Magazine and he’s author of the Mother Jones April, 2009 article Are Starbucks and Whole Foods Union Busters?: Inside the secret anti-union meetings, and how the companies plan to rewrite the labor-friendly Employee Free Choice Act.

Book Referenced in Interview:

Wrestling with Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Cappuccino by Kim Fellner