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.

  • @Zippy
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    41 year ago

    Up to the business. If they don’t want political statements or and statement made at work, I can understand it.

    • Blake [he/him]
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      fedilink
      -11 year ago

      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.