Woke Culture in the Workplace: Are Socialists Taking Over?

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Do you think socialists are taking over? Whole Foods founder and CEO, John Mackey, seems to think so.

In a podcast for Reason Magazine, Mackey expressed his concern about the rise of socialist sentiments in American institutions. “‘I feel like socialists are taking over. They’re marching through the institutions. They’re … taking over education. It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military. And it’s just continuing,” Mackey said.

As the conversation continued, Mackey told host Nick Gillespie that his town values are liberty and capitalism. “So, I’m deeply concerned about – you know, I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe in liberty and capitalism. Those are my twin values. And I feel like, you know, with the way freedom of speech is today, the movement on gun control, a lot of the liberties that I’ve taken for granted most of my life, I think, are under threat.”

Mackey, who will soon retire as the CEO of Whole Foods, also sounded the alarm on his future comments. The 68-year-old said that he will be more vocal about his thoughts on current events once he steps down. He recalled, “I have muzzled myself – ever since 2009 I wrote that Wall Street Journal Op-Ed that created a huge controversy. My board basically shut me down. It was like a father attacking the child and I was intimidated enough to shut up.” In 2009, Mackey wrote an op-ed that criticized various points in the Affordable Care Act.

Woke Culture in the Tech Industry

The remarks of Mackey come in a time of popular woke capitalism. Business leaders are building woke culture in the workplace to appeal to millennials. Silicon Valley, for example, is largely left-leaning and has younger workers that hold more socially liberal views. By supporting a woke workplace, big tech companies can raise their chances of attracting and keeping top tech talents.

However, this can also backlash. For one thing, too much woke could disrupt productivity in the workplace. This was the main issue cited by Kraken’s CEO when the company took on its own woke employees. The cryptocurrency company’s CEO Jesse Powell invited “triggered employees” to leave with four months’ pay. He said that people were losing a lot of time arguing and getting into therapy sessions to console colleagues when their feelings get hurt.

In an interview with Protocol, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said that less than 1% of employees took the offer for stated culture or mission differences. He added that the company already plans to hire more than 500 roles in the second half of the year.

If there’s something good we can say about the pandemic, it’s the fact that work-from-home setups provided some sort of refuge from office gossip and politics. There was less distraction; thus, it was easier to focus on your tasks.

But office-based work is back. And after more than two years of remote work, employees might find it challenging to interact in person with colleagues. It can be hard to engage in a conversation when you’re constantly worried about the words, phrases, and topics that are and are not allowed to be discussed in the workplace.

For now, the burden of maintaining a balanced level of wokeness in the workplace will be on companies. Alternatively, companies could shift the focus to purpose. With a purpose-driven company, work culture could be more about employees’ talents and contributions to realize shared goals and less about individual beliefs or political stands.