Workers at a Cambridge Whole Foods are approaching a week of persistent walkouts after several employees were sent home last Wednesday for wearing Black Lives Matter\u2026<\/b>
\nWorkers at a Cambridge Whole Foods are approaching a week of persistent walkouts after several employees were sent home last Wednesday for wearing Black Lives Matter face masks.
In a statement shared with The Boston Globe Monday, the employees at the River Street store in Cambridgeport demanded that the Amazon-owned supermarket chain \u201ctake real procedural action to join the anti-racist, Black Lives Matter movement\u201d and provide \u201cthe freedom for all Whole Foods employees to explicitly support Black lives.\u201d
The group also shared a call-to-action online Tuesday asking all Whole Foods team members to continuously wear Black Lives Matter masks starting Tuesday. The statement notes that while the company brands itself as supporting the movement, management at the supermarket still forbids workers from showing solidarity with it.
\u201cWe will not stop until Whole Foods recognizes its current hypocrisy and commits itself to real change instead of performative, empty activism,\u201d the statement said.
Employee Savannah Kinzer also started a Change.org petition making the same demands Friday. It now has over 2,000 supporters.
Countless companies including Whole Foods have claimed support in the fight for racial justice through social media posts and press releases. The Whole Foods website features a prominent banner stating that \u201cracism has no place here,\u201d though it does not include the phrase \u201cBlack lives matter.\u201d An invitation to \u201clearn more\u201d links to a lengthy mission statement that never mentions race or discrimination.
A statement from a Whole Foods spokesperson last week said that the employee dress code forbids \u201cclothing with visible slogans, messages, logos or advertising that are not-company-related.\u201d The statement also said that workers are offered new face masks if the ones they\u2019re wearing don\u2019t comply with the code.
Employee Kirby Burt told Liberation News, a monthly paper published by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, that other dress code violations like masks with Narragansett and Red Sox logos were ignored by management for months. Burt noted that managers are now more strict on addressing those violations in the wake of the Black Lives Matter mask controversy.
Whole Foods workers across the U. S. have donned Black Lives Matters masks this month after two employees in New Hampshire were sent home for wearing the masks. Team members from stores in Seattle and Philadelphia have held similar protests to their Cambridge counterparts.
Some other large companies like Starbucks and Taco Bell now explicitly allow their employees to wear Black Lives Matter masks at work. Both companies faced similar backlashes this month after management reprimanded workers for showing solidarity with the movement while on the clock.<\/p>\n