Labor Rights Are Not a Suicide Pact

Labor Rights Are Not a Suicide Pact

Arash Azizi’s defense of a racist worker isn’t solidarity. It’s a gift to union-busters everywhere.

The Intellectual Trap

Arash Azizi is a smart guy. His recent book on the Iranian freedom movement was lauded, and his work at The Atlantic consistently brings a socialist perspective to a publication that could use more of it. So when he published “Why the Cinnabon Story Doesn’t Make Me Happy” this week, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. He wasn’t defending the racism itself, I thought. He was making a structural argument about labor protections and at-will employment.

I read the piece twice. Then a third time. And I’m sorry to report that in his rush to protect the proletariat from the capitalist franchisee, Azizi has forgotten that “solidarity” requires a baseline of social conduct. By defending the indefensible, he’s turned labor rights into a caricature, and he’s handed opponents of the labor movement a rhetorical grenade they didn’t even have to manufacture themselves.

Let’s be clear about what happened at that Cinnabon in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin. Crystal Wilsey didn’t just make an off-color remark that got misinterpreted. She didn’t accidentally misgender someone or stumble over an unfamiliar name. On video, with full knowledge she was being recorded, she screamed a racial slur at Somali customers, declared “I am racist, and I’ll say it to the whole entire world,” gestured to her crotch, and told them to “suck it.” She allegedly called a woman’s hijab a “witchcraft bandana.” This wasn’t a teachable moment. This was a declaration of war against her employer’s customers.

Azizi’s argument is a textbook case of “class reductionism,” the belief that economic class trumps all other struggles and that any focus on race, gender, or other axes of oppression is a distraction from the “real” fight. In this framework, Wilsey is primarily a worker, and her racism is a secondary characteristic that shouldn’t disqualify her from the protections of labor solidarity. But this analysis ignores the reality of workplace safety law, civil rights jurisprudence, and what actual labor unions do when confronted with members who engage in gross misconduct. It also asks Somali Americans to subsidize their own abuse in the name of a coalition that explicitly dehumanizes them.

The Union Fantasy vs. Reality

Azizi dreams of “a better America” where “firing a worker would require an exhaustive process, including disciplinary action prior to dismissal, and involve representation by workers’ bodies.” He imagines that such a process “might still have ended by terminating Wilsey’s employment,” but would have done so with more dignity and due process.

Here’s the thing: that America already exists. It’s called “having a union.” And even in the strongest union contracts in the country, Crystal Wilsey would have been fired on the spot.

Labor law draws a fundamental distinction between offenses that require “progressive discipline” and those that warrant “summary discharge.” Progressive discipline is for minor infractions: being late, making mistakes, having a bad attitude. The employer gives you a warning, then a written warning, then a suspension, then termination. It’s designed to protect workers from being fired over a single bad day.

Summary discharge is for the “cardinal sins” of employment: theft, violence, intoxication on the job, and discriminatory harassment. These are offenses so serious that no reasonable employer could be expected to continue the relationship, and no union steward is going to bat for reinstatement. When your member screams the n-word at customers on camera and declares herself a racist to the world, you don’t file a grievance. You help her clean out her locker.

Labor arbitrators use what’s called the “Seven Tests of Just Cause,” developed by arbitrator Carroll Daugherty, to determine whether a firing was legitimate. Even under these worker-protective standards, Wilsey’s termination would sail through. Did she know the behavior was punishable? Yes; racial slurs are universally understood as fireable offenses. Was there substantial evidence of misconduct? She admitted it on video. Has the employer fired others for similar acts? Almost certainly. Was the punishment proportionate to the offense? For screaming slurs at customers and declaring yourself a racist, termination is the minimum.

Azizi is fighting a phantom battle. He’s asking us to imagine a world where unions protect workers from arbitrary firings, and then extrapolating that world to include protections for open racists. But no serious labor organizer wants that world. The Teamsters don’t go to the mat for members who assault coworkers. The UAW doesn’t file grievances for workers who steal from the company. And no union worth its dues would demand reinstatement for someone who screamed racial slurs at customers and told them to perform sex acts.

The best a union rep might do in Wilsey’s situation is negotiate a resignation instead of a termination to preserve her employment record. But they wouldn’t fight for her job, because fighting for her job would mean fighting against every other worker in that store who deserves a harassment-free workplace, and every customer who deserves to be served without abuse.

The Legal Reality: This Isn’t Brand Management

Azizi frames Cinnabon’s decision as corporate risk management, a billion-dollar conglomerate protecting its brand image at the expense of a working-class single mother. “Cinnabon was quick to terminate Wilsey’s employment and declare that her actions didn’t reflect the ‘values of Cinnabon,’” he writes, as if this were mere PR.

It wasn’t. It was legal compliance.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to maintain a workplace free of “hostile environments” based on race, religion, national origin, and other protected characteristics. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s federal law. And after Wilsey declared on camera that she is a racist and demonstrated that racism by abusing customers for their ethnicity and religion, Cinnabon had exactly one legal option: terminate her immediately.

Consider what would happen if they didn’t. Under the “negligence” standard, an employer is liable for harassment by employees if the employer knew or should have known about the misconduct and failed to take immediate corrective action. If Cinnabon kept Wilsey on staff after that video went viral, they would be legally liable for every subsequent act of harassment she committed. If she made another racist comment to a customer, the company would face a lawsuit. If she created a hostile environment for a Black or Muslim coworker, the company would face a lawsuit. If she so much as looked at a Somali customer the wrong way, an attorney would have a field day.

Azizi is asking the franchise owner to break federal civil rights law to protect the job of a single abuser. That isn’t socialism. It’s negligence with ideological branding.

And let’s be honest about who bears the cost of that negligence. It isn’t the corporate executives at GoTo Foods. It’s the other hourly workers at that Cinnabon who would have to work alongside someone who proudly declares herself a racist. It’s the customers who would have to decide whether they’re willing to risk abuse to buy a cinnamon roll. It’s the workers at other Cinnabons who would have to deal with the fallout when the company becomes known as a place that tolerates racist abuse. Labor solidarity means protecting workers from hostile work environments, not forcing them to share a break room with someone who thinks their hijab is “witchcraft.”

The Slippery Slope That Isn’t

The heart of Azizi’s argument is a fear of the slippery slope. If employers can fire Wilsey for her racism, he worries, they can fire progressive workers for their politics. He cites several examples: a Starbucks worker fired for writing “racists fav drink” on a cup allegedly ordered by Charlie Kirk, teachers and firefighters who lost their jobs for criticizing Kirk after his arrest, a janitor at Smith College disciplined over a false accusation of racism.

These are real cases, and some of them are genuinely troubling. The Smith College case in particular was a travesty; the janitor was accused of racism by a student, an investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing, and yet he still faced professional consequences. We should absolutely fight against that kind of injustice.

But Azizi’s argument depends on treating all of these cases as morally equivalent, and they aren’t. Writing “racists fav drink” on a cup is political speech, a snarky commentary on a public figure’s political views. Screaming racial slurs at customers and telling them to “suck it” is direct harassment. The first is protected expression that a reasonable society would defend; the second is verbal assault that no workplace can tolerate.

We draw these lines all the time. You can say “I disagree with the mayor’s policy on housing.” You cannot say “I’m going to burn down the mayor’s house.” You can criticize your coworker’s political views. You cannot create a hostile work environment by harassing them for their race or religion. You can wear a “Black Lives Matter” pin to work. You cannot scream the n-word at Black customers.

Azizi collapses these distinctions by treating all employer discipline as equally suspect. “The lack of proper labor protections that allows for workers to lose their job over a single incident can cut in more than one direction,” he writes. But the solution to unjust firings isn’t to prevent all firings. It’s to distinguish between just and unjust reasons for termination, and to build legal and social systems that protect workers from the latter while allowing employers to respond to the former.

This is what Title VII does. It prohibits employers from firing workers for their race, religion, national origin, or other protected characteristics, while still allowing employers to fire workers who harass others on the basis of those characteristics. It’s what union contracts do: they protect workers from arbitrary firings while still allowing for summary discharge in cases of gross misconduct. The line isn’t hard to draw. We’ve been drawing it for decades.

By pretending that we can’t distinguish between firing a worker for writing “racists fav drink” and firing a worker for screaming slurs at customers, Azizi isn’t protecting either of them. He’s just muddying the waters to the point where neither case can be analyzed on its merits.

Who Pays the Price?

The ugliest part of Azizi’s argument is buried in the middle. “When I saw the video, I naturally sympathized with the Somali couple,” he writes. But then he spends the rest of the piece asking that couple to take a backseat to the economic needs of the woman who abused them.

Think about what he’s actually proposing. Azizi wants a world where, if you’re screamed at by a racist at your local Cinnabon, your abuser keeps her job because she’s a single mother. Where the consequences for racial harassment fall not on the harasser but on the victims, who are expected to subsidize her livelihood by enduring future encounters. Where the “solidarity” of the working class means minorities must tolerate abuse from white workers in the name of coalition-building.

“Those of us on the left should be fighting to improve protections for workers of all races,” Azizi writes, “and thereby for the betterment of people’s material conditions regardless of their views.” But here’s the thing about “regardless of their views”: when someone’s “views” include the belief that your hijab is “witchcraft” and you should “suck it,” those views aren’t incidental to the labor struggle. They’re antithetical to it.

You cannot build a coalition with people who deny your humanity. You cannot forge working-class solidarity with someone who thinks you’re subhuman. The Somali couple that Crystal Wilsey screamed at are workers too. They have jobs, bills, families. When Azizi asks them to accept their abuse in the name of “sowing working-class solidarity as an antidote to the racial divisions the right cynically promotes,” he’s not including them in that solidarity. He’s asking them to sacrifice for it.

“Maybe I’m naive, or an incurable socialist,” Azizi writes in his conclusion. “But I’d like to think that even if a worker is racist to my face, I’ll never ask for their dismissal. I’ll try instead to appeal to our common interest in improving the conditions of our lives.”

Good luck with that. Good luck appealing to the common interest of someone who thinks your religious garment is “witchcraft.” Good luck building coalition with someone who screams slurs at you and tells you to “suck it.” Good luck explaining to that Somali woman in the hijab that her abuser really has her best interests at heart if she could just see past the racial epithets to their shared class consciousness.

This isn’t naivety. It’s a failure of moral imagination. Azizi can picture himself nobly refusing to demand consequences for his own abuser, but he can’t seem to picture what it’s like to be the target of that abuse day after day, to wonder if the person making your coffee is going to scream at you today, to feel your stomach clench every time you walk into a store because you don’t know if this is the one where someone will tell you your religion is “witchcraft.”

The “Single Mother” Shield

Throughout his piece, Azizi returns to the same emotional appeal: Wilsey is a single mother. She has a child to feed. Losing her job could be “catastrophic.” These are real concerns. Poverty is real, and the American social safety net is shamefully inadequate.

But being poor or a parent does not grant immunity from consequences. If Wilsey had thrown a tray at a customer, she would have been fired. If she’d stolen from the register, she would have been fired. If she’d shown up drunk for her shift, she would have been fired. Azizi isn’t arguing that single mothers should be exempt from all workplace consequences. He’s only arguing that they should be exempt from consequences for racism.

Why? Why is racial abuse the one category of gross misconduct that should be forgiven in the name of economic hardship? Azizi doesn’t say. He just assumes that racism is, at worst, a minor interpersonal conflict, a difference of “views” that shouldn’t affect someone’s employment. But racism isn’t just a view. When it’s directed at customers and coworkers, it’s a form of workplace violence. It creates hostile environments. It drives away customers and employees. It exposes employers to legal liability. And it causes real psychological harm to its targets.

The Somali woman who was screamed at in that Cinnabon has to live with that experience. She has to wonder whether it’s safe to go back to that mall, whether other workers think the same things about her, whether her children will face the same abuse. Her trauma doesn’t disappear because her abuser has a kid. Her humanity isn’t worth less because acknowledging it might cost a racist her job.

Azizi also mentions Wilsey’s “long rap sheet,” including charges of child endangerment, disorderly conduct, marijuana possession, and driving while intoxicated, then tells us we should “resist the urge to tell a simple moral story.” He’s right that criminal history shouldn’t automatically disqualify someone from employment. But he’s using the complexity of her biography to obscure the simplicity of this particular incident. Whatever else Wilsey has done in her life, what she did in that Cinnabon was clear, deliberate, and disqualifying. She didn’t make a mistake. She made a choice.

What the Labor Movement Actually Needs

Here’s the frustrating thing: Azizi is right about a lot. American workers do need stronger labor protections. At-will employment is a disaster that leaves workers vulnerable to arbitrary and unjust firings. The social safety net is inadequate. Unemployment shouldn’t mean destitution. These are real problems that deserve real solutions.

But Azizi undermines all of these arguments by choosing this case as his hill to die on. When you argue that the labor movement should protect someone who screamed racial slurs at customers and declared herself a racist on camera, you’re not building support for workers’ rights. You’re giving every union-buster in America the perfect soundbite.

“See?” they’ll say. “This is what the left wants. They want to make it impossible to fire anyone, even racists. They want to force you to keep abusers on your payroll. They care more about protecting bad workers than about protecting customers and coworkers from harassment.”

It’s a lie, of course. No serious labor advocate believes that unions should protect workers who engage in gross misconduct. No serious socialist thinks that racial harassment is just a “difference of views” that shouldn’t affect employment. But Azizi has given that lie a veneer of intellectual respectability. He’s written it up in The Atlantic with citations and moral complexity and appeals to working-class solidarity.

The labor movement needs better advocates. It needs people who can make the case for workers’ rights without asking minorities to sacrifice their dignity on the altar of class solidarity. It needs people who understand that “just cause” protections and summary discharge for gross misconduct aren’t contradictions. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Real labor solidarity doesn’t mean defending every worker no matter what they do. It means building workplaces where everyone, regardless of race or religion, can earn a living without being abused. It means fighting for protections that prevent arbitrary firings while still allowing employers to respond to genuine misconduct. It means recognizing that the Somali couple who were screamed at in that Cinnabon are workers too, and their right to shop without being racially abused is just as important as Crystal Wilsey’s right to due process.

The Solidarity We Actually Need

Arash Azizi wants a world where workers are protected. So do I. But a “better America” isn’t one where you can abuse Somali immigrants and keep your job because you have economic hardship. That’s not solidarity. That’s a protection racket.

Real solidarity would look different. It would include strong labor protections that prevent arbitrary firings while still allowing for consequences when workers engage in gross misconduct. It would include a robust social safety net so that job loss isn’t catastrophic. It would include anti-discrimination enforcement that protects workers from harassment while also holding harassers accountable. It would include union contracts that defend workers’ due process rights while reserving summary discharge for genuine cardinal sins.

It would also include an understanding that solidarity isn’t just about economics. The working class includes Somali refugees. It includes Black customers. It includes Muslim women in hijabs. When we ask them to tolerate abuse in the name of protecting their abusers, we’re not building solidarity. We’re telling them they don’t matter.

Crystal Wilsey made a choice. She chose to scream slurs at customers. She chose to declare herself a racist. She chose to tell a woman that her religious garment was “witchcraft.” Those choices have consequences, and they should.

Azizi asks us to consider her economic circumstances, her child, her struggles. Fine. Consider them. Consider also the Somali woman who now has to wonder whether it’s safe to go shopping in that mall. Consider her children, who watched their mother be racially abused while buying a cinnamon roll. Consider every minority worker and customer who will be just a little bit safer now that Cinnabon has made clear that this behavior won’t be tolerated.

That’s solidarity too. And it’s the only kind worth building.