Grocery bosses are retaliating against worker solidarity with Palestine. Stand with grocery workers fighting against Israel’s genocide!

Grocery workers in Washington state have been taking a stand against the apartheid state of Israel, the genocide in Gaza, and the increasingly brutal attacks and state-sanctioned violence in the occupied West Bank. They have been wearing union watermelon pins to work. The watermelon has long been a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the struggle against Israel's genocide and apartheid, since it was first used in 1967 after the Israeli state took control of Gaza and the West Bank and prohibited the Palestinian flag from being displayed in public for more than two decades.

Recently, workers at the Seattle-area grocery stores of the PCC Community Markets have been sent home early from their shifts for wearing pins with the watermelon symbol, and also pins with the Palestinian flag. The PCC bosses have justified these disciplinary actions by claiming the pins were “too political” to have at work. The UFCW 3000, which is Washington state’s largest union and represents grocery workers, including those at PCC, created union pins with the watermelon symbol in response to this retaliation by PCC management. Since then, numerous workers across multiple stores have worn these union pins to stand not only with the Palestinian people, but also with their fellow union members who faced those attacks from the bosses.

Under the prevailing national labor law, workers have a right to wear their union’s pins on the job. Despite this, the PCC bosses went even further by egregiously firing a worker at Seattle’s Greenlake Village PCC for continuing to regularly wear the pin. They continued to say the pins were "too political". The bosses don't hesitate to violate labor law when it is in their interests to do so, and they are shielded by the Democratic and Republican parties, both of which serve the bosses. The only way for us as workers to defend our rights and to win major improvements in our lives is by getting organized and taking collective action to fight the bosses and their political servants.

Come out to rally and picket with grocery workers and union members to defend our rights to fight in solidarity with the Palestinian people!