Whole Foods workers are suing the Amazon-owned supermarket, alleging the grocery chain punished them for openly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
The lawsuit accuses Whole Foods of firing a worker and disciplining another 40 for wearing the Black Lives Matter mask at work, according to the complaint. The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Massachusetts District Court on behalf of 15 employees from six stores, seeks the state of action of elegance.
The Whole Foods dress code prohibits all slogans or logos that are not similar to those of the company. But the lawsuit argues that Whole Foods only implemented this policy recently, when many workers began to dress in masks or pins in the slogan Black Lives Matter.
“Employees used pins or flags that supported their LGBTQ colleagues without any repercussions. Another worker dressed in a pin that said “Ciérrelo”, which can be interpreted as a politician,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, the plaintiffs’ top lawyer.
“Whole Foods did not apply its dress policy until its workers began to put on their Black Lives Matter masks. It’s discrimination against black workers and other workers who protect their black colleagues in the workplace,” he added.
The lawsuit also alleges that Whole Foods fired a worker, Savannah Kinzer, because she brabably supported Black Lives Matter and organized her colleagues through BLM masks. Kinzer, who worked at Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believed the field of company staff was illegal and filed court cases with the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to the lawsuit. He informed his officials of the complaint on Saturday morning and fired in less than an hour, Liss-Riordan said.
A Whole Foods spokesman denied that Kinzer’s dismissal was similar to his help with Black Lives Matter, and said that “no team member has been fired for wearing black Lives Matter mask or clothing.”
“Savannah Kinzer has been separated from the company for continually violating our time and attendance policy by not executing her assigned shifts, appearing several times beyond the paintings in the last nine days, and opting to leave during her scheduled shifts. It’s just not true that she was separated from the company for wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask,” she said.
In recent weeks, corporations like Starbucks and Taco Bell have expanded their dress code policies to allow Black Lives Matter clothing to become paints. Last week, the Office of special counsel, an independent federal agency, concluded that federal painters were allowed to make the motion explicit while they were in the paintings and that the statement did not count as partisan political activity.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has made several public statements in support of Black Lives Matter and denounced racism, adding two Instagram posts in which he talked about the demanding situations facing African-Americans. Amazon announced last week that the company had donated nearly $19 million to social justice organizations, adding individual donations from the company’s workers.
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