FRFI West London spoke to AIDAN BYRNE-SARNO, a barista and labour organiser who is fighting back against political censorship in his workplace. Aidan is challenging his employer, Old Spike Coffee, and their discriminatory workplace policy, which prevents employees from being able to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
FRFI: Why are you taking action against your employer?
Aidan: I was forced to remove my Palestine badge after two customer complaints. I’ve been wearing my Palestine badge as a barista at Old Spike for three months. While I was working at our location in The Shard, I received a customer who complained multiple times about my Palestine badge to the front desk. Eventually, [The Shard] warned me that I could not wear political symbols. So I wore a badge that said ‘I Am Against Genocide’. This was also considered too political for The Shard. Old Spike removed me from all my shifts at The Shard, then changed their policy so that I could no longer wear my Palestine badge. I am going to take Old Spike to an employment tribunal for Discrimination by Association, unless they repeal this policy.
FRFI: Can you tell us more about Old Spike?
Aidan: Old Spike was founded in 2015. The first location was a store in Peckham. They were founded as a ‘social enterprise’, and they donate 65% of their profits to homelessness. They also occasionally provide barista training for people who are homeless or who are refugees.
I think that there’s a pretty massive hypocrisy in pursuing these goals while ignoring the fact that the largest homelessness problem really in the world right now is in Gaza, where the vast majority of the housing stock has been destroyed. Or that the actions of Israel, backed by Britain and the US and other imperialist powers, are responsible for a massive outflow of refugees, including from Palestine.
FRFI: Explain Old Spike’s new policy on political symbols.
Aidan: The guidelines that they issued are called ‘The Politics in the Workplace Policy’, and they basically mandate that no political or national symbols may be worn in the workplace. What may be worn in the workplace are symbols of protected characteristics. So, for example, since this ban, I have also been wearing a trans flag pride badge. This has been allowed under the justification that this is a protected characteristic.
Obviously, I totally agree with [allowing] this, and I think that we should all wear trans flag pride badges. I think that it’s very hypocritical to effectively pick and choose which ‘protected characteristics’ are actually protected and which are deemed too political. The Palestine flag is the symbol of a national identity, which is also a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.
FRFI: Why is it so important to support Palestine in the workplace?
Aidan: I think that by challenging it, we are in a small way resisting genocide.
When you think about genocides in the past and when you think about racism today, you’re imagining people denying that that suffering happened. In the US there’s a movement of historical revisionism to deny that slavery was bad, or to deny that black people in the US faced genocidal violence in the form of slavery. The exact same thing is now happening in most of the imperialist countries where genocide of the Palestinian people is being completely denied.
If we’re serious about resisting a genocide, part of that is by talking about it, by showing that it is happening that you can’t deny.
FRFI: What is your advice for people going through similar issues?
Aidan: To get organised and know that you’re not alone. The IWW is a fantastic union that has experience with these cases over Palestine badges and has offered me fantastic support. The real key is to be organising at our workplace with our coworkers around these issues. If you’re at a workplace and they either make you take off your Palestine badge or they’re punishing you for supporting Palestine, you should talk to your coworkers about the situation and you should start organising.
FRFI: How can people support you?
Aidan: They can tell the company that in fact, it’s going to be far more harmful to them if they support genocide denial. You can go on to the Old Spike website and use the contact page to tell the company that this is a racist policy and that it should be repealed, and that their employees should be allowed to wear Palestine badges while on shift.
Contact Old Spike here: oldspikeroastery.com/pages/contact-us
