this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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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.
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 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.
@trias10
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.
I agree with you about that, but these employees have chosen to do a job where they come face to face with customers daily, and some of those customers may get offended by seeing an employee wearing a BLM badge, in red states for example. The company doesn't want to antagonise a potential customer and lose a sale, so they're asking that no employees wear any political markings. And honestly, I think that's a fair request if you work in a customer-facing role.
Notice that this ruling only applies to Whole Foods workers, not Amazon warehouse workers, who can probably wear whatever they want since they don't deal with customers.
Because it is weird. It's even weirder for any average person to defend it.