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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.

You actually can fire people based on their political beliefs, because believe it or not, political affiliation is not a protected class under current US federal law (maybe some state law though). There are only 7 current federally protected classes: age, race, sex, religion, marital status, disability, and sexual orientation. That’s why Republicans have been announcing they want to make political affiliation a protected class soon, because I guess that’s the next big battleground, is employers start to hire/fire based on politics.

I take your points, but I guarantee you this isn’t a decision about politics by Amazon, but purely a maximisation of revenue decision. Whole Foods employees interact with customers face to face, every day, all across the US, from blue states to red states. They know that their customers in some places consider BLM to be a political organisation, one that they don’t support, and that goes for proud boys, KKK, whatever. The point is, you don’t want to antagonise any customers coming in through the door, and corporate is aware that people are awfully sensitive these days and ready to kick off over any tiny thing, so to ensure no customer gets offended and takes their business elsewhere, and to ensure a policy which can be applied nationally for all states where Whole Foods exists, it’s just easier to say they won’t allow anything which their customers could potentially consider political.

That’s all this is, it’s not the political dog whistle some are making it out to be. This is just corporations wanting to remain neutral and take money from every customer, not just liberal ones. Hence I agree with this policy, it’s not coming from a bad place and it’s not an absurd request either.

And yes, as you said, not allowing someone to wear a religious article of clothing is a lawsuit waiting to happen, which will be a slam dunk, but this isn’t the same.

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.

It’s not just a corporate thing, police, military, and fire brigade aren’t allowed to wear overt political badging either.

There’s a general rule that if you work for an organisation which asks you to wear a work related uniform of some kind, you don’t get to add anything to it, political or otherwise. You don’t see bobbies with a Pink Floyd sticker on their chest.

BLM is a brand though. The lady who founded it just bought a £1.25M house in LA’s exclusive Topanga neighbourhood for all cash.

That doesn’t sound like some sort of grass roots, help lift people up, Mother Teresa sort of organisation to me.

Hence yeah, people don’t like BLM. Some don’t like what it stands for, while others, like me, don’t like it because the founders used it as a massive vehicle for grifting and lining their own pockets.

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.

How much money do you get if you file?

I agree entirely, which I guess brings both of us back to the original OP in that people succumb to apathy and helplessness when dealing with climate change. The great unwashed masses will never agree to policies which curtail their economic prosperity or inconvenience them, and capitalism will never agree to anything which halts its self-serving pursuit of profits. So it’s Waterworld or bust, and I’ll end up as that old dude inside the bowels of the oil tanker.

Have you been accused of glibness before in your life by friends, family, or co-workers?

I don’t actually. Will you explain it to me?

Do you have any other pedantic fact corrections about ancient Rome or the Middle Ages you can share?

You’re right, I’m the cunt and not you, clearly.

So a small group of workers should suffer because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Those rail workers weren’t striking for higher pay, they wanted the basic human dignity of having paid time off and paid sick days.

There’s no need to be pedantic for no reason. Whilst it’s true silphium was used for many things (including cooking), we don’t know what percentage of it was used for which aspects, but we do know for certainty that one use was an abortifacient, at huge scale, and that the plant is now extinct.

Ergo, we can surmise that it’s widespread use as an abortifacient most likely contributed to its eventually extinction, along with its other use cases. Although I never said in my message that abortion was the sole use, I merely said that they used it for so many abortions it eventually ended up extinct.

Honestly mate, this comment seemed like a superfluous exercise in pedantic narcissism and reminds me why I need to stay far away from Lemmy.

I actually did know that, but it doesn’t invalidate my point whatsoever.

If Democrats were truly supportive of working class people they wouldn’t be voting to remove their collective bargaining rights via an act of Congress. Think about that for a second – they would rather vote to send those workers to jail than allow them to exercise a core right of workers everywhere.

Doesn’t matter that Biden stepped in months later, Biden is the president and I’m talking about the general party in Congress, e.g. Democrats en masse.

If you mean “compete” in a capitalist sense, then you’re right. But sailing ships absolutely “compete” in that they can move goods and products from one port to another using zero fossil fuels. That’s not ignoring any reality, they actually do work and sail using the wind. Open any history book for proof if you don’t believe me.

But as we’re already aware, relying in any way on capitalism or its definitions is going to do the exact opposite of saving us from climate change.

Democrats and Republicans came together in a super rare and bipartisan endeavour to shut down the rights of hard working railroad workers trying to strike for sick days and time off in December 2022. The final senate vote was 85 vs 15.

That should be a pretty clear indication that at least when it comes to helping working class people where it counts (money and basic human rights), both parties are identical.

Murdering babies is pretty great though, did you know that humanity has been doing it since ancient Mesopotamia? The ancient Romans used so much silphium as an abortifacient that the plant went extinct.

Perhaps we do. I meant “easily” in that the tech is already there, nothing needs to be invented. We could start building clipper ships again tomorrow, or design a clipper to hold TEUs. It’s a much “easier” problem than converting all commercial lorries and personal autos to electric, across all countries, even 3rd world ones.