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.

  • null@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    Let me make it a little more clear: how about “All lives matter”?

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That’s just a “thought terminating cliche”, like “it is what it is”. Its intention is to end a conversation that the speaker doesn’t want to have.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché

      Created as a response to “Black Lives Matter”, it means “I don’t care about black lives because I am not black. Stop talking about them.”

      To prove this, just ask anyone who utters or displays that phrase the following question:

      “What do you think about black people?”

      • null@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        And you think if this goes through, Amazon wouldn’t also ban masks with that slogan on them?

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Neither is political. One is a statement of identity and the other is against that identity.

          “I exist” and “you should not exist” are not political opinions. They are existential ones.

          • null@slrpnk.net
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            1 year ago

            “Black Lives Matter” is not a statement that merely means “I exist”. It’s a statement borne from a social/political movement, and it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.