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.
The fact that there is an organization of the same name does not mean they own the slogan. People using the slogan almost never do so in reference to this organization nor are necessarily even aware that such an organization exists.
BLM is more of a human rights statement. Anything is “political” if the right choses to whine about it. An example is putting pronouns on name tags. It’s a great idea to ensure employees are addressed correctly and frankly shouldn’t be any more political than a name tag containing your name, but the right choses to view them as political because they need a constant culture war.