Starbucks Corporation CEO Howard Schultz said Sunday the company will hire 10,000 refugees in 75 countries over the next five years.
The announcement comes just two days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday suspending all refugee admissions from any country for 120 days, placing a 90-day moratorium on the entry of any citizen from seven Middle Eastern countries, and capping the number of refugees in 2017 at 50,000.
Schultz laid out the details of the employment initiative in a letter to employees, promising the company would do “everything possible,” to support the workers affected by the ban, Reuters reports. Starting in the U.S., Starbucks will begin the initiative by hiring people who worked with former U.S. troops as interpreters and support personnel.
This is not the first time that Shultz has gotten political, putting the company in the center of the national spotlight. The chief executive wrote a public letter weighing in on the “polarized and emotional debate” of gun control in Sept. 2013, calling for customers to “no longer bring firearms,” into Starbucks facilities. Shultz also started open forums for race relations discussions for Starbuck’s employees across the nation.
The president’s executive order garnered international backlash, and outrage from civil rights groups.
Victory!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/uyza3zrQSX
— ACLU (@ACLU) January 29, 2017
Shultz will step down as CEO of Starbucks in April, in order to build a new chain of high-end coffee shops. The new company, referred to by those familiar as “Siren Works,” will allegedly charge as much as $12 a cup for its incredible brew.
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