Customers Are Upset With Whole Foods After the Firing of an Outspoken Worker
A Whole Foods staffer demanded that policemen pay for their actions, and was swiftly fired after calling for the suspension of free food to law enforcement.
Employee Megan Murray, 22, was promptly fired after criticizing her Philadelphia store, via scathing social media posts, for providing free meals to police officers in the wake of George Floyd protests. The Philadelphia store shares a building with a local police station and provided police officers with free food and water during recent anti-police brutality protests.
Scoop: A Whole Foods store in Philadelphia fired an employee, active in organizing coworkers, who called on the store to stop providing free food to police officers during Black Lives Matter protests. https://t.co/vaUWvvgDF5
— Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) June 11, 2020
Despite working at the Philadelphia store for approximately two years, Murray was swiftly dismissed from her well-established position after her provocative posts surfaced. The company vehemently denied that her dismissal was at all connected to her posts (they allegedly have a zero-tolerance policy for retaliation) and claimed that the firing was prompted by a “major infraction” that they were unable to cite.
After learning their store had given free food to police officers during Black Lives Matter protests, employees at the Whole Foods store in Philadelphia circulated a graphic on social media asking customers to call and complain. https://t.co/F6FH5D2xEI
— VICE (@VICE) June 12, 2020
Murray maintains that the firing was retaliatory in nature; a punishment for her political activism and public condemnation of the store’s actions. In addition to her posts regarding the store’s alleged allegiance to police officers (the perpetrators of recent hate crimes) rather than Black Lives Matter peaceful protestors, she has also criticized working conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Everyone meet the real Whole Foods https://t.co/FE1A91z5wG
— Whole Worker 📢 BLACK LIVES MATTER 📢 (@WholeWorkerWFM) June 10, 2020
Megan Murray is not alone; another politically active Whole Foods worker was recently fired.
Megan Murray is the second employee active in the grassroots group Whole Worker that Whole Foods has fired in the past two weeks. The company also fired an Orange County worker who created a running count of COVID-19 cases in company’s US supermarkets. https://t.co/pkCvMMEbao
— Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) June 11, 2020
We are watching Whole Foods closely and hope that this locally sourced, organic, and plant-based produce provider is acting ethically beyond the alimentary sphere.
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