Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has congratulated UKUncut for today’s Starbucks protests.
Ms Bennett was involved in two of the groups protest in London. It was taking action in at least 45 Starbucks stores across the UK to highlight the company’s payment of just £8.6m in UK tax over the past 13 years on sales of £3.1bn.
UKUncut was also demonstrating against the coffee chain’s announcement of a plan to “voluntarily” pay a small amount of “tax” for the next two years at the same time as simultaneously cutting staff pay and conditions.
Ms Bennett, who took part in two protests near her home in Camden, London, said: “Companies must realise that saving tax by exploiting government laxity will come at a cost of reputation and business.
“Starbucks’ approach may be legal, but today’s protests show how much damage has been done to their standing among the public.
“The major fault lies with government, which has failed to take action against aggressive tax avoidance, as we’ve seen recently, Vodafone, Google, eBay and Amazon.
“By turning Starbucks stores into refuges, crèches and homeless shelters, UKUncut has shown how government cuts are having a huge impact across the country, but particularly on women, in terms of job losses, benefit cuts and loss of services."
Natalie added that Starbucks’ belated “offer” to pay £10m in tax for each of the next two years was not enough.
“Taxes shouldn’t be ‘donations’. The state isn’t a charity to be given crumbs from a rich multinationals’ table.
“To start to repair the damage Starbucks should pay the proper tax levels for the past six years (how long corporations are required to keep records), and restructure the business to pay fair taxes permanently in future.
“And they should reverse this week’s slashing of staff pay and conditions. It should be paying staff as a minimum a living wage, should commit to offering standard hours contracts, paid meal breaks and decent sick and maternity pay.”