Western Washington Fred Meyer and QFC stores unlawfully barred employees from wearing Black Lives Matter pins and face masks at work in 2020, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled.
The administrative law judge’s ruling is in line with September 2021 findings by the NLRB’s Northwest regional office in Seattle, which found the stores violated federal labor law by prohibiting workers from wearing union-sponsored Black Lives Matter pins, and by sending home workers who refused to remove them.
A representative from Kroger, the parent company of Fred Meyer and QFC, did not respond to requests for comment.
The buttons were provided by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 21. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB in September 2020 after the button ban.
The union, which merged with another local last year to become UFCW Local 3000, argued the ban violated federal law because it prevented workers from taking collective action and it hadn’t been negotiated in advance.
“Workers taking the action of wearing those buttons was related very closely to what was happening to them at work,” said UFCW Local 3000 spokesperson Tom Geiger. “Workers experience racism in regards to their work, with customers, in some cases with a coworker, in some cases with a manager.”
It was an argument Administrative Law Judge Mara-Louise Anzalone agreed with, ruling that Kroger maintained and enforced an “overly-broad” dress code.
“I find that, by collectively displaying the ‘Black Lives Matter’ message on their work uniforms, the employees in this case acted to advance their interest — as employees — to an affirmatively anti-racist, pro-civil rights, and pro-justice workplace,” Anzalone wrote in her May 3 decision.
Typically, in cases where the NLRB finds merit in unfair labor practice charges, the agency encourages the involved parties to settle rather than end up in litigation, facilitating negotiations between the company and the union to address the issue. More than 90% of such cases end with a settlement, according to the agency.
In this case, Kroger refused to settle, Geiger said, and the case proceeded to trial.
The dispute over the pins and face masks started after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.
Some QFC and Fred Meyer workers began wearing Black Lives Matter pins and donning face masks with the slogan handwritten over it. Eventually, UFCW Local 3000 distributed BLM-themed buttons with the union’s logo to at least 15 stores.
Senior managers at Kroger declared the buttons a violation of company dress codes and directed local store managers at Bellingham, Burien and Seattle-area stores to ensure workers removed “unauthorized buttons/paraphernalia.”
Company officials offered workers company-made wristbands that said “Standing Together” and “Integrity, Honesty, Diversity, Inclusion, Integrity, Safety and Respect” as an alternative, which many employees rejected.
Geiger described the company’s actions as “two-faced.” A week after Floyd was murdered, Kroger’s CEO Rodney McMullen denounced the “senseless killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more, too many more across our country” in a video statement. He also encouraged workers “to openly share their thoughts, feelings and experiences with discrimination.”
“The company was posting things on their website, talking about how they were … recognizing many of the challenges Black workers face,” Geiger said, “and then later … when workers started wearing these buttons, Fred Meyer and QFC pushed back.”
As a result of the ruling, workers will be allowed to wear BLM buttons, badges, patches and face masks. Anzalone also ordered Kroger to pay workers for any loss of earnings or benefits resulting from the store sending them home.
Kroger can appeal the ruling, which would bring the case before the NLRB in Washington D.C. After reviewing the case, the board could issue its own remedies.
