Goodyear Tires caved to pressure from President Trump and announced Thursday the company will now allow workers to wear pro-police messages on clothing in the workplace, a reversal from just twenty-four hours ago when it issued a defiant statement that it would only allow Black Lives Matter and LGBT messages (“racial justice and equity issues”).
Goodyear Chairman Rich Kramer released a statement that said in part, “We have clarified our policy to make it clear associates can express support for law enforcement through apparel at Goodyear facilities.”
The controversy erupted this week when a screen image from a Topeka tire plant worker training session was posted online that showed what kind of messages are allowed at work and what messages are not allowed. Black Lives Matter and LGBT messages were specifically allowed, but Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, MAGA or other political expressions or material were not allowed.
In a tweet and at a press conference Wednesday afternoon, President Trump called out Goodyear:
Q Mr. President, I want to ask you about your tweet earlier today on Goodyear. It was essentially calling for a boycott on Goodyear tires.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q Do you want the federal government to stop buying and using Goodyear product as well? And is there anything —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m not happy with Goodyear because what they’re doing is playing politics. And the funny thing is the people that work for a Goodyear — I can guarantee you I poll very well with all of those great workers in Goodyear. And when they say that you can’t have “Blue Lives Matter,” you can’t show a blue line, you can’t wear a MAGA hat, but you can have other things that are Marxist in nature, there’s something wrong with the top of Goodyear. And what the radical left does is they make it impossible for people to do business if they’re Republican or if they’re conservative. They put out all sorts of effort: “Don’t shop there.” They do vicious things, not so different than what you saw on the streets of Portland two nights ago.
