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.
Why does anybody think it’s a good idea to wear political statements into work? Just do your job.
Imagine if you ran a business and one of your customer-facing employees showed up in a MAGA hat. You’d probably want them to leave it at home right?
You think equal rights and fair treatment for all is “politics”?
They aren’t banning masks that say “equal rights and fair treatment for ALL” , they are banning BLM masks, BLM is a political movement/organization.
No BLM is a statement that black lives matter. That’s completely different from saying, for instance, blue lives matter. One is a race that people are born into and the other is a job. It’s not political, it’s a cry for help.
Ya it’s a political movement that wants cops to stop killing black people.
Unfortunately it is.
Either employees should be allowed to wear personal accessories to express themselves, or they should not. How do you define what is and is not political?
Also, this article’s vague, but “no slogans, logos, or advertising except for Whole Foods branding” is Whole Foods’s official dress code. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/whole-foods-black-lives-matter-mask.aspx
The problem with all of these things is always unequal enforcement. For example if the store allowed an employee to wear a thin blue line mask, and fired another employee for a BLM mask
Except the store didn’t do that
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It’s was a dismissed court case… What are you talking about “we don’t know” court records are a thing. You can get them directly by submitting a FOIA request.
Or just reading the new articles that spawned from the case.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-dismisses-whole-foods-workers-lawsuit-over-black-lives-matter-masks-2023-01-23/
There’s no evidence that it was unfairly applied. And if you have such evidence I’m sure you can submit it to the plaintiff’s lawyers and they’ll set you up with a sweet payday.
Would ALSO cover “thin blue line” as well btw… Technically it would cover the proper American flag as well…
Up to the business. If they don’t want political statements or and statement made at work, I can understand it.
That just means that employers can push their own political agendas and suppress alternatives.
“Employees may not wear pins of a political nature, such as expressing support for Joe Biden. Wearing a pin expressing support for Donald Trump is acceptable because that is not political.”
Like I said, it either has to be all or nothing - allow self expression or do not. Allowing self expression only if the company agrees with the expression is essentially compelled speech.
Damn straight
Agreed, if I ran a grocery store chain I’d just have the employees wear uniforms with no personal expression.
At the end of the day it’s the business’s right to set whatever policy they want though. If the government decides employees have a constitutionally protected right to wear whatever they want to wear to work, we’re gonna see a lot of crazy bullshit.
Would it be a bad thing? I think with some sensible exceptions it would be a very good thing to permit free expression as the default.
So, we can ban crosses? I’m obviously going a bit far, but both somewhat touch on the way people believe rights should be secured, and both involve human rights (one to free expression of religion, another to life and fr33dom from unfair treatment in general). Both make statements to others that others may find uncomfortable, depending on their beliefs.
…yes? Why shouldn’t a business have the right to ban their employees from wearing a cross? Go work somewhere else if wearing a cross is that important to you…
The point is the the USA the complaint would never have been made about the cross.
I mean, I agree, to an extent. As someone else pointed out, the cross banning would never work out in the US, and that shows the difference in how both things are treated here.
I just want to say that restricting someone’s right to wear a cross to work is hella illegal in Canada.
When there’s comments here bringing up the first amendment and apparently forgetting that it includes that whole thing about not having a national religion, which is exactly what’s happened/continuing to happen with christianity. It’s just a little bit different than “black lives matter,” which is just…a fact?
Except BLM and LGBTQ isn’t political. It’s Civil Rights. This isn’t Dem vs GOP, it’s ethical vs unethical treatment of humanity. Unfortunately certain individuals in the US portray this as political, but that’s so they can use it as leverage for their goals. You wouldn’t say “stop beating a slave and set him free” because your political affiliation says so, you say it because you see a human being suffer.
I’m sorry but you just sound naive. These are not mutually exclusive. Civil rights are part of politics. All you’re arguing is that you think the politics you like should be allowed in the work place, and the politics you don’t like should not. That’s the hottest take in the entire post.
Because workers are more important than the businesses they work for, obviously.
is lemmy being brigaded? seriously, what the fuck is this. “just do your job” is never an adequate response to worker complaints
Yeah, I’m seeing this kind of trash on a lot of posts when lemmy was not even close to this bad just a month ago. It’s fucking gross.
Redditors ruin everything they touch
It is odd. I’m a Wilsonian Neocon with the caveat that I understand not everyone can always get what they want, but Lemmy’s usually “I hate the US so much that I support Russia” not anti-union shit. I suppose the GOP just made the UAW strike into a political talking point so the bot account goons are trying to steer conversations against unions even when the community never wanted it.
Ah the old, “an influx of normal opinions not in my extremist progressive echo chamber is brigading”
I think it’s good when people support good things and bad when people support bad things. Amorally applying the rules for their own sake is actually not a virtue; the rules should be oriented to promote good outcomes and discourage bad outcomes. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Who decides what’s good or bad?
We all do. We already do this throughout society. Individually we make choices on what is good or bad, and collectively those choices add up and are expressed either in law or social contract.
I actually had to talk to the boss and tell him that this manager’s motherfucking confederate flag hat made me uncomfortable, like he was a floor manager who wore the stars and bars every day, in a western state that didn’t exist during the civil war… and they didn’t say anything to him until a customer complained. He wore that shit for like a month. The good ol boy’s club is unreal
That’s where the constant disclaimers to the effect of ‘the views expressed do not nessecarily reflect the position of the company blah blah blah’ whenever someone speaks who isnt the principal executive of the organization. The problem being though it doesn’t go both ways, when one of the high leaders speaks it’s portrayed as ‘our company believes’ which then at least somewhat implies the employees of said company are in agreement. Individual expression is just leveling the field by letting the employees say 'the views of the company do not reflect my own.
It’s less common for any smart business to make highly charged statements unless they happen to be sure the majority will support them for it, but not unknown. I’ve seen a couple small ones around here that went as far as to plaster Q slogans all over their signs. From a business perspective they just alienated a major portion of their potential customers without anyone setting foot in the door.
I would agree with you, but this is pretty blatant far-right bias and with the genocidal turn that camp has taken, it’s vitally important to take sides.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
Lol “genocidal turn”
Why does anyone think whether black people matter or not is political?
Because BLM is a political movement
And what are the politics of the movement?
Convincing black people that everyone is against them and that they should feel bad about it, while convincing white people that the only way they can do anything about it is by giving them money
most confusing poster in this whole thread. you say some good shit then dumb shit like this
I speak the truth
But if I can’t wear my rainbow onesie to work it’s literally genocide.
Lol apparently people here don’t see sarcasm.
I think there’s a difference between not seeing sarcasm and not finding it amusing (particularly in certain circumstances).
Everyone knows they’re being sarcastic, but we also live in a world where it’s a crime punishable by death to be LGBTQ+, where mentioning the topic in public is a crime and there are US politicians who have literally called for genocide against LGBTQ+ people, so it’s just a shitty thing to say.
Oh yeah, how many whole foods do they have?
No they’re aren’t. You’re lying
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So when the statement of
Is made… you reference a person who ISN’T a politician as your source? What office does Michael Knowles hold?
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Nope. Literally the same fucking comments section you met me in. It’s TOTALLY wild that we meet again… unheard of.
Funny that you didn’t actually respond to the comment… again… Almost like literally anything you say you can’t defend at all.
Now the REALLY funny thing is that you’ve actually responded to @[email protected] several times too! So if I’m “stalking” you… then you’re stalking them. You can literally fuck off with your dumb bullshit somewhere else.
Thanks for proving me right about your lies
We do. We just don’t like you two very much.