A Virginia man was fired last week after he refused to remove his “Trump 2020” hat during a safety meeting at work.
Dave Sunderland, 55, said the human resources department told him that his hat violated a policy banning shipyard workers from campaigning at work. Sunderland told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he wasn’t campaigning, he was just wearing a hat.
“I wore a ball cap. I wasn’t passing out bumper stickers. I wasn’t asking people to vote. I wasn’t doing anything, except for wearing a ball cap going to work,” he said.
On Aug. 25, Sunderland was leaving the safety meeting when a supervisor from a different division reportedly told him to take off the hat.
“He said, ‘You can’t wear that. And I said, ‘I’ve been wearing it for four years.'”
After he refused to take off the hat, the supervisor conferred with the general foreman, who wrote a memo that ordered Sunderland to remove his “Trump 2020” hat.
Foreman Lakesha Starks wrote in the memo that she explained it was “against company policy to wear political gear” and that he would be fired if he refused.
Sunderland was suspended from his job for three days and was fired on Friday, according to the report.
The pipefitter said he would wear a wide variety of Trump-related hats, including a “Make America Great Again” hat, a “Keep America Great” hat, and the “Trump 2020” hat from his car into the building where the builders would gather for a pre-shift safety meeting.
He would take off his Trump hats while he was working in the shipyard. His supervisor warned him not to wear a “Make America a ‘Shithole.’ Vote Democrat” hat, to which he agreed, but he said he was never warned about any other hats.
Sunderland said that in his eight years of employment at Newport News Shipbuilding, he had seen employees wear clothing displaying political messages.
In 2012, employees wore Barack Obama T-shirts, and in 2016, workers wore “I’m with her” T-shirts in support of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, he said. In the 2020 election cycle, he hasn’t seen a Joe Biden shirt.
Sunderland added that he didn’t have a problem with his former co-workers expressing their political views, but that the policy wasn’t being applied equally to all employees.
“I don’t have a problem with anything anybody wears,” Sunderland said. “That’s their First Amendment right to express themselves, you know, freedom of expression. That’s their right. But when I wore something, they came down on me. … They take away my freedom of expression, but they don’t for other folks.”
A spokesman for Newport News Shipbuilding told the Times-Dispatch that the company’s policy on political activity is shared with employees during training.
“As we have previously communicated to our employees, we do not allow political campaign or partisan political activities on company property, such as wearing attire with messages that include a campaign slogan,” the spokesman said.
Sunderland stands by his decision to refuse to take off his pro-Trump cap.
“This is the United States of America, and we have those rights, and I could find another job,” he said. “Why should they take away my rights? I’m patriotic. I love this country. … It’s a damn good place to be.”
