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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Fuck Wholefoods
None of my homies shop at Wholefoods
Idk that 5% cash back is hard to beat. I mean sure, fuck amazon for being anti-union, definitely need to trust bust them to but until then I can’t get 5% cash back when buying household goods anywhere else.
That 5% would be great, if WF wasn’t like 50% more expensive LOL
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/whole-foods-vs-trader-joe-180008164.html
Reminder that Amazon is funding cop city https://news.littlesis.org/2022/11/15/meet-the-major-corporations-and-cultural-institutions-helping-build-cop-city-in-atlanta/
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.
- shiveyarbles ( @shiveyarbles@beehaw.org ) 4•2 years ago
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.
- Juno ( @Juno@beehaw.org ) 3•2 years ago
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 plaintiffs were told they had to remove their Black Lives Matter face masks because they violated the dress code, but the workers refused and were sent home. After being sent home several times, they were fired for violating the company’s attendance policy.
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
if the store allowed an employee to wear a thin blue line mask,
Except the store didn’t do that
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.
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.
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”
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?
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.
It’s not “Whole Foods” it’s Amazon. Whole Foods died when Amazon bought them.
source: I’m from Austin and know several people that work there from employees to management. They killed everything that was whole foods.
Pretty sure Whole Foods had shitty conservative executives back then too didn’t they?
You can’t escape those fucks living in Texas. They’re everywhere.
iiuc, wf is not saying that customers can’t wear BLM masks. They don’t want to show a political stance and, as a result, don’t want BLM masks worn by their employees, because that could be misconstrued as wf or Amazon taking a political stance. I can understand that. However, they, then, must ban ALL shows of politics in their store by them and their employees, and that includes LGBTQIA+ stuff. Otherwise, they’re just banning BLM stuff, which will be
misconstrued (notice the crossed out ‘mis’) as them taking a political stance against black folks.
On one hand, I agree with you
On the other hand, how do we live in such a fucking hellscape that “black lives matter” is a politically charged statement and not an obvious fact. Same for LGBTQIA+ folks deserving equality. (frustration not pointed at you, but at the social climate)
I agree with you completely. It’s unacceptable.
Interesting that pride stuff is considered political because my shitty mega corporate big box employer considered a BLM shirt political but let us wear our pride pins whenever because that was within the dress code
How dare our employees imply to the general public that we think Black Lives Matter!
What a wild hill to die on.
Exsqueeze me? What the amazon fuck, WholeFoods.
You can’t seriously be surprised by this. When you work for a company, especially one that interacts with customers, you’re almost guaranteed to have to follow uniform requirements. This isn’t new.
Reason 9,000,975 for not shipping Amazon/Whole Foods.
When I worked at a big box store for years I wasn’t allowed to wear my BLM shirt or anything “political” but my Trumper coworkers got away with wearing their Trump shirts or Let’s Go Brandon shirts, and they even put Let’s Go Brandon stickers up all aroubd the employee facing areas. If you told managers about it they addressed it as a dress code violation and regarded you as a snitch.
Got to love selective enforcement
So what stopped you wearing your BLM shirt?
Like fuck you very much for implying that I don’t believe black lives matter? When I literally just described the repression of political speech in the workplace I faced?
You chose to write it on the internet. I didn’t expect you to get upset at a basic question.
All I wanted to know was how they stopped you when other people were allowed to wear political clothing. I’m not implying anything.
Idk if you’ve ever worked a shitty oppressive “essential” job during the peak of a pandemic because you couldn’t afford to quit, & the US unemployment system doesn’t pay out if you get fired for a cause dress code violations, so I had to not wear it in order to stay employed. I hope you understand, random who is casting aspersions on me and blaming me for the oppression and double standard and my workplace taking a racist political position, that I just described.
Obviously, no business wants to be associated with BLM any more than they want to be associated with the KKK. Every company I’ve ever worked for has had dress codes that prohibited divisive political slogans and offensive language.
That’s quite the false equivalence you’ve made there
They’re both reprehensible political extremist movements. BLM has the added stank of being a fraudulent money-laundering scam on top of it, too.
I guess the Summer of Love didn’t happen.
Ahhh yes the BLM movement, famously known for lynching thousands of people just like the KKK!
Also, the KKK were only fighting to uphold their racist ideals. This is exactly the same as the BLM movement trying to fight against racism.
No false equivalence here!
Yes, both are extremist movements. One (BLM) doesn’t want black people to be murdered in the streets, while the other (KKK) want to murder black people in the streets. What is wrong with you?
No, BLM wants to spread lies about society, burn down cities, murder people, and loot, and swindle your own movement out of millions of dollars.
Chauvin’s prosecution was political.Get out of here, racist.
Shut up, liar. Quit slandering people.
Still waiting for you to tell me how stating black lives matter is a divisive political statement…
BLM’s purpose is to create racial hatred and divide.
it seems you do that on your own. go on, tell us how many black friends you have now
Seems like you’re the one doing it right now…
I believe black people’s lives matter. I hold that view so strongly that I’m willing to shout it in the streets. Does that make part of a political extremist movement?
It makes you disingenuous. Everybody knows and believes black lives matter. Shouting it in the street amounts to a society-wide false accusation of racism.
If you then go on to set property on fire or use the message to swindle people out of their money, then you are a political extremist and a criminal.If by “shout it in the streets” you really mean “shut down the streets” as BLM tends to do, then absolutely yes you’re an extremist
Nah, it’s spot on
Really stupid. I mean REALLY stupid.
Yeah, thinking it’s a false equivalence is really stupid
Uniform is uniform, no politics in work is how every job I’ve had was. Can I wear a Spanish flag pin cuz it’s my heritage? No it violates dress code
How is the statement Black Lives Matter a divisive political slogan? Take all the time you need.
6 day old account with -900 karma… I think it’s a troll, guys!
Honesty, imo, shame on Amazon for not barring anything but solid-colored, patterned, or Bezos-Empire-Branded masks, explicitly, in their dress code.
I’m a (mostly) vegan, liberal AF, solidly middle-class, homeowner married millenial parent (i.e the portrait of a Whole Foods customer), and I agree with BLM, but I would be put off by any political or politicalized messaging in a supplier/customer relationship. I’m here for your general tao seitan and a TTLA…not for your influence.
Saying that black people exist and should remain alive is not a political statement. Do you want to ban hats that say “veteran” too? Or maybe charity and cancer awareness logos?
Being a live black person is not a political act. Think about that when ordering some seitan and being “liberal AF”, whatever that means.
This feels very similar to me to businesses freaking out and trying to prevent their employees from wearing rainbow flag or pronoun pins. Or rainbow masks, for that matter.
I think employee uniform requirements should be just enough to make employees identifiable so they can do their jobs (e.g. answer customer questions about where the lettuce is or whatever). Just a mandatory hat or shirt is enough to do that. Beyond that, they’re humans. Let them be fucking humans.
Saying that black people exist and should remain alive is not a political statement
It’s absolutely political because it sits on the false premise that others argue otherwise. Nobody does, it’s a false premise used to create racial divide and lower the moral of the black community
So you don’t agree with BLM then
- Politicize the idea the that an ethnicity shouldn’t be arbitrarily beaten by police.
- Ban that idea because it’s “politicized”
- Everyone is ok with it because despite politicize is a verb we’re supposed to pretend this isn’t being done by someone that thinks it’s ok for police arbitrarily beat the shit out of minorities.
It’s almost like this a system of some kind. And maybe racist? A racist system? So not only aren’t we doing enough to take on systemic racism, corporations like Amazon are creating new forms of systemic racism.
That idea has no bearing on reality, you likely support many businesses owned by right wing assholes indirectly just by living somewhere that doesn’t use 100% renewable energy for all of its power needs, for example, and so do I, you can’t really help it. Corporations are people under US law and they have been doing political speech under that regime in the form of unlimited spending for over a decade. If Amazon actually believes that black lives matter they should indeed say it. False neutrality and saying that black lives matter is too political a stance for them to want to take is a stance in itself.
How Cool And Liberal and definitely not two faced. So while black people begin to avoid Whole Foods, you’ll still be shopping there because its not a problem for you. And as a good liberal of course, you agree there’s no reason people can state “black lives matter to me” on their clothes. Sure, in the privacy of your own property but not in Massa’s house. Bezo’s free speech quashes the protections of the speech of his lessers and… that is simply the law. You’re relieved of guilt.
You know, I’m not a tankie, but the self deluding, boot licking, and casual racist assumptions about whose lives are “political statements” based on their lamenting of being constantly murdered and stepped on by society, do give me a sympathetic window into their specific disgust of neoliberals. People like you go along to get along and nothing more.
You’re quite fine with racism because Whole Foods is cheap.
But this is specifically about workers wearing a BLM mask. Not the general public.
Amazon/Wholefoods are totally within their rights as employers to enforce a dress code. That’s it. That’s the end of the line.
Now, if they had previously let workers wear “FJB” masks without enforcing the dress code, that’s obviously a bias and something that should be dealt with.
This is, quite obviously, a worker violating a dress code and seeking publicity by riding the coattails of a heated issue with their own persecution complex.
If Amazon has a dress code, either it allows for a degree of self expression or it does not. The move to ban political messaging in the workplace doesn’t apply to the mere statement “black lives matter”. Black Lives Matter was a social movement and its name was informal and de-facto. There is an activist organization Black Lives Matter that claims (to my knowledge) a limited ownership of white-on-black “#Black Lives Matter” but the phrase itself doesn’t have a PO box, it doesn’t make political contributions. It is a value statement that one believes black human beings have inherent value. So to cede that the English phrase “black lives matter” is political assumes that the default LEGAL and POLITICAL viewpoint is that they do not, which is the terrifying, unspoken, yet not codified by law, truth underlying half of the America justice system. When you make the argument that Amazon has the right to ban such a phrase from clothing on political grounds you and Amazon are both admitting that you believe black lives in a general sense have no value and you’re willing to take it to court, because that is where this is probably going.
Are we really thinking that anyone at Amazon who matters actually believes that? Believes that this fundamental values conflict of American access to protected speech would actually resolve in a way that decidedly points to black lives having no worth as a legally upheld opinion in America? Really that is neither here nor there, we’re watching a version of this fascist semantics argument about free speech play out with minor or medium consequences all over the internet. This sort of move will curry some favor with racist culture warrior consumers and businesses, but it is about clamping down on employee rights to communicate symbolically at all. If the color chartreuse was a meme amongst unionists and union proponents, Amazon would do the same thing. On one side of the coin they are making a concession toward a racist status quo and on the other they are saying that the SCOTUS ruling they cite allows them to ban symbols in the workplace.
It isn’t good to shop at Whole Foods with this knowledge in the back of your brain. We will now, if you want, employ the thought terminating cliche that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and this is almost always true. However Amazon should not be allowed to target symbolic expression like this without a dress code saying “our employees wear an apron with the Amazon smile on it and a grey, breathable jumpsuit underneath”. There are workplaces like this with dress codes where this isn’t an issue. You are seeing Amazon casually admit it controls the symbolic language of the workplace entirely if it suits their agendas. Legality is not universal truth, especially when the Supreme Court has been arranged to flagrantly serve the interests of the business class. So there’s one argument for why people should get to wear chartreuse colored shirts that say whatever the fuck they want but hate speech.
I lost this typing it the first time and my second try wasn’t as good. I don’t care if you have a bunch of holes and flaws in my arguments to point out, I will quietly read them and appreciate them, but I will maintain you’re arguing for something racist and unethical either way unless it’s a really good argument. IE you’re not going to get me to say “gee you are right” by drawing similarities to Twitter cancellations over bad words and deplatforming of conservatives for speech that would get them punched in the nose in a public venue. In life, it is impossible to avoid political ideas, and even more impossible to avoid the techniques for propagating memetic formatted ideas like ads for conflict diamonds or unwell street preachers screaming the good word. You should buy your seitan somewhere that isn’t trafficking with fascist pseudolegal interpretations of free speech so they can control their employees by betting that a spineless lower court will uphold a directly evil SCOTUS ruling.
Welp, just cancelled Amazon Prime. Never shopped at Whole Foods, so can’t do any more there.
Kinda the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Probably should’ve done it a long time ago with all the union busting and general shittiness they are towards employees. But FFS if you’re gonna pay people the bare minimum, treat them like cogs, at least allow them to have something they care about on their person while they’re doing that shitty job.
Saying that black people are humans and their lives matter as much as any other human should be the least controversial thing ever. But a bunch of racists made it controversial and Amazon is just going along with that.
A company not wanting it’s employees to wear politicized materials while at work is what makes you mad? I suppose you also want them to be able to wear rebel flag or SS masks? A Trump facemask with MAGA on it? Maybe you just read the title?
Black Lives Matter is a unambiguously good stance.
The rebel flag signifies support for people who fought a war against their fellows for the right to hold others in chains. SS signifies support for a mass murder’s campaign to subjugate the world and drag the world into darkness. Support for Trump is support for an autocrat who would replace Democracy with a cult of personality.
The fact that you cannot distinguish these beyond lumping them together as political stances doesn’t speak well for your analytical skills. How about you can support your fellow man but you can’t support evil?
There’s nothing good about supporting a terrorist organization
BLM may be a good thing, but the simple fact is that it has still become politicized and while not displaying BLM causes no customers to get pissy, displaying it does get some customers pissy. Companies aren’t obligated to “rock the boat”.
Maybe we shouldn’t coddle and normalize bigots
It’s not actually a problematic political stance to state that Black Lives Matter, it’s unambiguously good, whereas the other things you mention are hate speech, hope that helps.
I didn’t say it was good, bad, or neutral. The fact is that it doesn’t matter, because as I’ve already stated, it’s a politicized subject.
No I don’t want them to allow Confederate, Nazi, or Trump symbols. Because those things suck.
What is it with people that think that we’re supposed to be fair to racist assholes? Learn a little about the paradox of tolerance, ok?
Which fucktards decided to downvote this comment?
Bootlickers (not the good kind)
Another example of a company with street cred giving it up. If employees felt safe wearing BLM masks to work that meana the company’s image as is consistent, even internally.
And they just threw it away.
Time to go to Wegmans, y’all.
HEB baby
Wegmans is extremely regional. And when I did live somewhere that had one, I almost never went because it was always massively over crowded.
Fair enough. I guess I should have specified it was for those with one in their area.
Another reason to avoid Whole Foods.
Another title gazer thinking authors have his best interest in mind
Should be a giant red flag to bring this up 8 months after the lawsuit was dismissed… This is trying to stir something up.
Wtf that is weird. @graywolf please explain yourself
Do you mean Grayox? The original article is from just a few days ago so I don’t see what the issue is anyway.
If they have a dress code for their employess, it’s their right to prevent their employees from wearing anything not up to code. No matter if it’s making a statement or not.
They’d have to be uniform in its enforcement. For instance, “no pins” would be fine, but “no BLM pins, but MAGA pins are fine” wouldn’t stand.
I agree.