Stores ask employees to remove 'BLM' pins
EVERETT — To Shawntia Cunningham, the enforcement of a dress code seemed selective, but the message abundantly clear: Don’t wear a “Black Lives Matter” button on company time.
Until recently, Cunningham, 27, said management at the south Everett Fred Meyer store where she’s worked for over a year had supported employees wearing “Black Lives Matter” attire.
She recalls no storewide memo announcing a ban, just individual conversations from higher-ups to put them away while on duty inside the stores.
“One minute we were able to wear ‘Black Lives Matter’ pins and the next it went poof,” she said.
She’s not alone.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21, the union representing over 13,000 workers at Fred Meyer and QFC stores in the Puget Sound, first heard complaints in late June of employees in Bellingham not being allowed to wear “Black Lives Matter” accessories on the job.
In response, the union distributed buttons with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in August as a showing of support and solidarity. Within weeks those accessories were also deemed against policy, according to Marc Auerbach, campaign director for UFCW 21.
A spokesperson for Kroger, owner of both QFC and Fred Meyer, said the company backs the sentiment behind the “Black Lives Matter” movement and is offering a different approach through wristbands that read “Standing Together.”
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