Amazon.com’s Whole Foods Market doesn’t want to be forced to let workers wear “Black Lives Matter” masks and is pointing to the recent US Supreme Court ruling permitting a business owner to refuse services to same-sex couples to get federal regulators to back off.
National Labor Relations Board prosecutors have accused the grocer of stifling worker rights by banning staff from wearing BLM masks or pins on the job. The company countered in a filing that its own rights are being violated if it’s forced to allow BLM slogans to be worn with Whole Foods uniforms.
Amazon is the most prominent company to use the high court’s June ruling that a Christian web designer was free to refuse to design sites for gay weddings, saying the case “provides a clear roadmap” to throw out the NLRB’s complaint.
The dispute is one of several in which labor board officials are considering what counts as legally-protected, work-related communication and activism on the job.
I’m with Amazon on this, seems a reasonable ask for employees to not wear any political/cultural/social things at work with their official uniform.
Guys is it Political to not want to get killed by the police or just get seen at the hospital when you’re having chest pains?
Interesting take you have there.
BLM is a brand though. The lady who founded it just bought a £1.25M house in LA’s exclusive Topanga neighbourhood for all cash.
That doesn’t sound like some sort of grass roots, help lift people up, Mother Teresa sort of organisation to me.
Hence yeah, people don’t like BLM. Some don’t like what it stands for, while others, like me, don’t like it because the founders used it as a massive vehicle for grifting and lining their own pockets.
The idea behind Black Lives Matter is not a brand, though. People who support the cause are simply supporting equity and progress. These fundamentals don’t change just because one person affiliated with the marketing of the idea may be questionable.
There are multiple segments to BLM, since the fight for progress takes multiple fronts. And indeed, the head of Black Lives Matter Greater New York City, which is not affiliated with Khan-Cullors’ Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, called for “an independent investigation” to find out how the global network spends its money.
And it turns out that the reason Patrice, the woman buying homes you’re referencing in bad faith, acquired some personal wealth from having a best selling book from back in 2018, and a television deal to produce content with Warner Bros.
I’m sure her earning wealth through program advocacy and people reading stuff won’t change anything about how you feel about them, though.
There’s a bunch of different autonomous groups, with no one “founder.” This has always been the single talking point that the fox news crowd loves to parrot to sound like a “gotcha” when they want to be racist but are too cowardly to show who they really are. If that’s not obvious by now, then idk what to tell you, except that arguing against human rights and for police brutality is not going to endear you to people.
So if they’re banning BLM as political, do they have to be even handed and ban all political iconography?
Is a rainbow political? Obviously anything with an American flag is political, so those need to be banned. Anything like a cross obviously would be forbidden - necklaces would have to be tucked in and invisible. Christianity is far more of a political thing in the US than BLM, as it’s being used to specifically and actively drive legislation. Would they then have to ban employees from other religious dress, like wearing a hijab or yarmulke? I don’t recall Muslims or Jews passing legislation in the name of their religion at the national level, but do activities in Dearborn or Williamsburg count?
Are wedding rings heteronormative? They’re certainly both a cultural and a social thing. Makeup is also both cultural and social, and additionally potentially has gendered implications. If we ban rainbows, do we ban anyone wearing makeup or require everyone to do so, since they’re potentially signaling gender identity?
I’m going to start using GOP rhetoric and replace rainbow flag with wedding rings.
Wedding rings is woke propaganda.
So if they’re banning BLM as political, do they have to be even handed and ban all political iconography?
Yes… because the policy is
no slogans, logos, or advertising except for Whole Foods branding
I think you’re way into the weeds here and forget the most important thing to remember about “freedom”: things like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are a compact between you and the government, not you and private companies. Private companies don’t owe you anything besides whatever the government has expressly legislated, such as explicit protection for religious clothing and icons like crosses, Sikh turbans, etc.
However, beyond that, individual companies have the right to request their employees look and dress in certain ways. The flip side there is, if you don’t like those rules, you are free to not work there anymore.
Of course, legislators can always choose to pass laws forcing companies to allow more exemptions, but that hasn’t happened yet for displays of a political organisation.
I get that. It makes logical sense. It’s just that corporations have so much power to impose their will and it feels weird to me that we let them do that even when it comes to how a human presents themself.
No, I am very well aware of that. But they’re not saying “You can’t wear a BLM button because we do not think black lives matter, but you can wear a proud boys one if you want.”
They may or may not have that right - that’s going to depend on both the currently existing corporate rules and any state/local legislation.
I was thinking in particular about a case in the past 5 or so years where a company was sued for forbidding one employee from wearing a hijab while allowing others to wear crosses. It was a case of religious discrimination.
My point is that for this to be non-discriminatory it has to be a policy that’s handled in an even handed fashion. Of course it has nothing to do with the constitution - I’m not even sure why you’d introduce that unless you’re staying to strawman. But I know that I can’t fire someone for saying in the workplace that they agree with Trump unless I have a wholesale policy banning talking about politics. I’d be in trouble if I said people could talk about politics, but they could only say nice things about Biden and bad things about Trump. You might be able to get away with that at a locally owned auto body shop, but not at a major corporation.
My further point is that saying that black lives matter isn’t political, unless there’s a major political party that thinks black lives don’t matter. Rainbows aren’t political, unless there’s a major political party that thinks the LGBT community shouldn’t be visible. Books on gay parents aren’t political unless there’s a political party that thinks gay people shouldn’t be allowed to be parents. But that same party would allow a flag pin, or a yellow ribbon, or a book about a hetero couple with a kid. It’s only political when they disagree with it. Otherwise it’s just “normal.”
I agree, but then I started thinking “why the hell do I think it’s so reasonable for a corporation to strip away the humanity of its employees” and I’m not sure where I’ve landed now.
They’re not doing anything if the sort, that’s hyperbolic nonsense. When you’re paid to represent a company, you shouldn’t be displaying items that link them to a course they’re not corporately linked to. Once you leave at the end of the shift you can put all the political regalia you like back on.
If no one is allowed to wear any flair then that’s fair. But everyone is allowed (and possibly encouraged?) to wear pride stuff in June as part of the anyway corporate rainbow-washing. So I have to ask why it’s OK to wear “LGBTQ+ folks deserve life and civil rights” stuff but it’s not OK to wear “Black folks deserve life and civil rights” stuff? Why is stating that Black lives have value so offensive that it’s worth fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to ban it?
It’s not just a corporate thing, police, military, and fire brigade aren’t allowed to wear overt political badging either.
There’s a general rule that if you work for an organisation which asks you to wear a work related uniform of some kind, you don’t get to add anything to it, political or otherwise. You don’t see bobbies with a Pink Floyd sticker on their chest.
Yeah, it just seems like common sense to me that you don’t wear political regalia to work, and that’s coming from the UK where our workers rights are a big stronger.
Like it or not, while you’re on the clock, you’re on the companies time and the only political stuff you should be promoting, if any, if causes they’ve aligned themselves too corporately.
