Kroger-Owned Stores Banned Black Lives Matter Gear

In the summer of 2020, workers at Fred Meyer and Quality Food Centers were wearing small, visible messages on their uniforms: Black Lives Matter buttons, masks marked “BLM,” and other insignia supporting racial justice. For some employees, the message was also a test of their employer’s public commitments. Kroger, the parent company, had publicly spoken out against racial injustice. At the stores, however, managers began telling workers that the same message could not be worn on the job.

The dispute was not simply whether a retailer could set standards for uniforms. The record before the National Labor Relations Board described workplaces where employees had long worn an eclectic assortment of buttons and pins, including union messages, Pride symbols, pronoun buttons, jokes, cartoons, and pop-culture designs. Many of those items were not formally approved. They were commonly tolerated.

When the companies began restricting Black Lives Matter insignia, they changed the rules employees had been working under. And because the affected workers were represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21, the Board found that the companies had a legal obligation to notify the union and give it an opportunity to bargain before making those changes.

A dress code that was strict on paper, flexible in practice

Fred Meyer’s written “Dress and Appearance” policy said unauthorized buttons, badges, or patches were not allowed. But testimony and photographs showed that employees regularly wore items outside the written rules without being told to remove them.

Workers wore buttons criticizing early shifts, messages such as “I TRIED” and “HELP,” cartoon images, animal pictures, and references to franchises including Star Wars, Marvel, and Star Trek. Pride and pronoun buttons were also common. The record did not show that employees were routinely ordered to remove these items.

Quality Food Centers had a different written policy, but the practical picture was similar. Its rules referred to company-approved buttons and pins, yet employees wore union buttons, Pride insignia, pronoun pins, and other designs. After COVID-19 masks became mandatory, employees also wore masks with graphics, animal prints, and other logos, including rainbow-flag designs associated with Pride.

That history mattered. The Board’s decision did not treat the Black Lives Matter restrictions as an isolated dress-code clarification. It found that the companies had changed how workplace rules were applied, and did so without bargaining with the union.

The companies’ written policies were one thing. The rules employees actually lived under were another. Summary of the record described in the NLRB decision

Then the Black Lives Matter message became a workplace flashpoint

After George Floyd was killed in May 2020, Kroger publicly expressed support for racial justice. The administrative law judge’s decision described a corporate message that encouraged Black employees to share their experiences and presented the company as committed to confronting racism.

At the same time, employees at the stores began wearing Black Lives Matter buttons and masks. The judge found that the workers’ collective display of the message was connected to their interests as employees, including their interest in an anti-racist workplace. The record also described employees questioning why BLM messages were treated differently from Pride insignia that had been allowed at work.

The companies’ response was to tell employees that they could not wear BLM insignia, direct them to remove it, and prohibit a combined “Black Lives Matter/UFCW Local 21” message. Some employees were sent home, or effectively sent home, after refusing to comply.

The distinction is important: the Board’s September 2026 decision specifically found that the companies unlawfully changed represented employees’ terms and conditions of employment without giving Local 21 notice and an opportunity to bargain. It was not necessary for the Board to pass on every separate finding the administrative law judge had made about employees’ protected activity.

Workers faced a choice: remove the message or leave work

The consequences were not confined to a disagreement over clothing. The Board’s order identifies two Fred Meyer employees, Herbert Reynolds and Forrest O’Reilly, who were sent home or constructively sent home for refusing to remove the insignia. It also identifies employees who were instructed or warned to remove BLM or combined BLM-and-union insignia.

At Quality Food Centers, the order identifies Kristen Wilder and Cobina Stryker as employees who were unlawfully instructed to remove the insignia; Wilder was sent home after refusing. The decision does not provide a single total for all lost wages or other financial effects. Instead, it orders the companies to make affected employees whole for losses and qualifying direct or foreseeable financial harms caused by the unlawful changes.

That remedy matters in practical terms. When a worker is sent home for refusing a disputed workplace instruction, the dispute can become an income issue as well as a question of workplace expression. The Board ordered compensation where losses are established, but the final amounts were not specified in the decision.

What happened, and when

The COVID-mask rule was part of the same bargaining problem

Quality Food Centers’ mask addendum required masks to look professional and generally limited them to company-issued masks, solid colors, certain patterns, or small manufacturer logos. It prohibited other logos, writing, and graphics. The company made this revision in July 2020 while Washington State had a mask mandate in place.

The record indicated that QFC had conversations with the union about COVID-19 and related matters, but the parties did not dispute that QFC made the dress-code revision without providing notice to Local 21. The Board found that this unilateral change also violated the duty to bargain.

The issue was not that employers can never establish dress codes or mask standards. The decision focused on the obligation to bargain with the employees’ exclusive representative before changing covered terms and conditions of employment. Consultation about a general subject is not the same as notice and an opportunity to bargain over a specific change.

What the Board ordered

The order also requires notices at covered facilities in Washington State and electronic distribution where the companies customarily communicate with employees that way. The notices must remain posted for 60 consecutive days. The companies must preserve and provide records needed to calculate backpay and related relief.

The Board ordered compensation for adverse tax consequences, if any, from lump-sum backpay awards. It also provided for interest and for compensation for other direct or foreseeable financial harms resulting from the unlawful unilateral changes. The decision does not set a final dollar figure for those remedies.

Why the bargaining obligation matters

For union-represented workers, workplace rules are not always a matter management can change unilaterally. Dress codes can affect what employees wear, how they express support for coworkers, and the conditions under which they can continue working. When a company changes those rules, the bargaining process gives the union a chance to respond before the new policy takes effect.

The ruling also puts a concrete limit on a familiar corporate tension: a company can publicly promote a value while its workers challenge how that value is treated inside the workplace. The NLRB’s legal finding was not a general judgment about the sincerity of Kroger’s public statements. It was a determination that the subsidiaries failed to follow required bargaining procedures when they changed rules governing represented employees.

The practical test now is compliance: whether the companies rescind the unlawful changes, correct the specified employee records, provide the required notices and make-whole relief, and bargain with Local 21 before making covered changes in the future. The order sets those obligations out clearly. The decision does not state the final amount of compensation owed or establish that every part of the remedy has already been completed.

Primary source: Fred Meyer Stores, Inc., a subsidiary of The Kroger Company, and Quality Food Centers, Inc., a subsidiary of The Kroger Company, National Labor Relations Board, Cases 19–CA–272795 and 19–CA–272796, Decision and Order dated September 30, 2026, 375 NLRB No. 53, including the attached administrative law judge decision.