Levi's Employee Told To Shut Up

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So Jennifer C se y say Si C Jennifer SI
will call her. You probably don't know her name. She
was an elite youth gymnast and tells a very charming
story about going to a gymnastics exchange meat thing when
she was young in the Soviet Union and bringing uh

(00:21):
five pair of Levi's with her to trade for the
Russian likecra like uniform stuff for gymnasts because that was
the best in the world at that time. It's kind
of a charming tale echoes her youth. But she's always
been this enormous fan of Levi's Janes, and over the
decades she came to work for Levi's, rose up through
the ranks, eventually became the global brand president in the year,

(00:45):
first woman to hold the post. So she's the one
I should complain to about their lack of quality control. Perhaps, well,
if I get three pairs of thirty three thirty two
sday all fit completely different, I wouldn't complain to her anymore.
She ain't got the gig, but maybe so out um.
But so she assented to this great height. Well she
has resigned and she lays the story out, and I

(01:09):
think it's really worth going through the particulars. In two
thousand eight, she says, She says her advocacy, which she's
long been an outspoken advocate for various issues, and it's
fueled Arise and Levi's and it's always focused on kids.
In two thousand and eight, when I was VP of Marketing,
I published a memoir about my time as an elite

(01:29):
gymnast that focused on the dark side of the sport,
specifically the degradation of children um and she mentions that
the gymnastics community threatened me with legal action and violence
for her. Competitors, teammates and coaches dismissed my story is
that of a bitter loser just trying to make a buck,
But Levi stood by me. More than that, they embraced

(01:51):
me as a hero. Things changed when COVID hit early
on the pandemic. I publicly questioned whether schools had to
be shut down. This didn't seem at all controversial to me.
I felt and still do, that the draconian policies would
cause the most harm to those least at risk, and
the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public
schools who need the safety and routine of school the

(02:12):
most you're on the right side of history with that
point of view. Here's where it takes a dark, dark turn.
I wrote op eds, appeared on local news shows, attended
meetings with the mayor's office, organized rallies, and pleaded on
social media to get the school's open I was condemned
for speaking out. This time. I was called a racist,
strange accusation given that I have two black sons. I

(02:35):
was called a eugenicist and a q and on conspiracy theorist.
In the summer of I finally got the call. You know,
when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company.
Our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to
pipe down. I responded, my title is not my Twitter bio.
I'm speaking there's a public school mom for four kids.
But the calls kept coming from legal, from HR, from

(02:57):
a board member, and finally from my boss, this CEO
of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly
about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools
and the harms caused by virtual learning. Well, they didn't
try to muzzle me out right. I was told repeatedly
to think about what I was saying. Meantime, colleagues posted
non stop about the need DAOs Trump in the November election.

(03:18):
I also shared my support for Elizabeth Warren, by the way,
in the Democratic primary, and my great sadness about the
racially instigated murders of the Maud Aubrey and George Floyd.
Nobody at the company objected any of that. Then, in October,
when it was clear public schools were not going to
open that fall, I proposed the company leadership that we
weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city.
In San Francisco, we often take stands on political issues

(03:40):
that impact our employees. We've spoken on gay rights, voting rights,
gun safety, and more. This time the response was different.
We don't weigh in on hyper local issues like this.
I was told there's also a lot of potential negatives
if we speak up strongly, starting with the numerous exacts
who have kids in private schools in the city. Wait
a minute, Yeah, I'm confused by that part. Yeah, maybe

(04:03):
they didn't want attention on the fact that the executives
kids in private schools were going to school and frequently
not wearing masks. Maybe anyway, I refused to stop talking.
I kept calling out hypocritical and unproven policies. I met
with the mayor's office eventually uprooted my entire life in California.
I'd lived there for over thirty years and moved my
family to Denver so that my kindergartener could finally experience

(04:26):
real school. National media picked up on our story. I
was asked to go on Laura Ingram's show on Fox News.
That appearance was the last straw. The comments from Levi's
employees picked up about me being anti science. You want
to stop there? I mean we could spend the next
twenty minutes there anti science, pointing out that kids are

(04:48):
not at risk and school should be open. Okay, I'll
go on about me being anti fat. I had retweeted
a study showing a correlation between obesity and poor health outcome.
I'm into my own fat, Yeah, no kidding, And me
being anti trends. I tweeted that we shouldn't ditch Mother's
Day for Birthing People's Day because it left out adoptive

(05:10):
and step moms. I would guess that nine eight percent
of the country agrees with that position. Right and and
perhaps the most bizarre, Although calling her uh anti science
is pretty bizarre um. They also called me racist because
San Francisco's public school system was filled by black and

(05:32):
brown kids, and apparently I didn't care if they died.
They also castigated me for my husband's COVID views, as
if I his wife were responsible for the things he
said on social media. All this drama took place at
our regular town halls, a company h company wide meeting
I look forward to but now dreaded. Meanwhile, the head
of Brace Yourselves Diverse that ay equity unenclosure at the

(05:54):
company asked that I do an apology tour. I was
told that the main complaint against me was that I
was quote, not a friend of the black community. At Levi's,
I was told to say that I am quote, I
am an imperfect ally. I refused the fact that I
had been asked in seen to be the executive sponsor

(06:14):
of the Black Employees Resource Group did not matter. The
fact that I fought for kids for years didn't matter.
That I was just citing facts didn't matter. The head
of a R I'm Sorry HR personally told me that
even though I was right about the schools, that it
was classist in racist that public schools stage shut while
private schools were open, and that I was probably right

(06:34):
about everything else. I still shouldn't say so. I kept thinking,
why shouldn't I the follow During a dinner with the CEO,
I was told that I was on track to become
the next CEO of Levies. The stock price had doubled
under my leadership, etcetera. The only thing deal, Oh, I
know it, I know it. The only thing standing in

(06:56):
my way, he said, was me. All I had to
do was stop talking about this school thing, but the
attacks would not stop. On on anonymous trolls on Twitter,
some with nearly half a million followers, said people should
boycott Levi's until I'd been fired. UH. Every day a
dossier of my tweets and my online interactions were sent
to the CEO, etcetera. UH. At one meeting of the

(07:17):
executive leadership team, the CEO made an offhand remark that
I was acting like Donald Trump. I felt embarrassed and
turned my camera off to collect myself. In the last month,
the CEO told me it was untenable for me to stay.
I was offered a one million dollar severance package. All
I had to do was sign a non disclosure agreement
about why I've been pushed out. The money would have

(07:39):
been very nice, but I can't do it. Sorry, Levi's
she turned down the million dollars to be able to
speak her mind. That is pretty damned impressive. One more
is on the right side of history over time. I
hope I lived long enough to see it. We're going
to look back on the shutdowns of the schools and

(08:02):
the masking of the kids, and a variety of the
things as crazy stuff. And and everybody we in agreement that, yeah,
I know, wasn't that crazy? What was going on back then?
It must have been people must have been something final
chilling note. And I recall was it Martin Luther King
Jr's Words that um that I less remember the voices

(08:27):
that helped me when I was down than the silence
of my friends. In my more than two decades at
the company, I took my role as manager most seriously.
I helped mentor and guide promising young employees who went
on to become executives. In the end, no one stood
with me. Not one person publicly said they agreed with me,
or even that they didn't agree with me, but supported

(08:48):
my right to say what I believed anyway, how sick
has a culture become when somebody who is backed by
the vast bulk of science. By the way, folks, if
you're not familiar with us, there are a couple of
countries on Earth that have kids in masks of schools
right now. I mean almost none, almost zero all year

(09:10):
vaunted enlightened European, Northern European countries that are showing us
the way to socialism, blah blah blah. None of them
got their kids in masks. None of them. But this
woman woman who said I think they're right, and the
sciences is with me on this, couldn't get one bit
of support. How sick is that culture. It's unbelievable. We're

(09:34):
in such a weird place. I think we're in a
so much weirder place than people are fully appreciating. Like
I was talking about last hour, we're completely at sea
on who we want to be president, completely at sea.
Biden is a mistake of history. He was elected because
enough people didn't want Trump, and a majority Democrats don't

(09:54):
want him to be president. I would I would argue
that Biden was elected primarily because he's a big nothing. Yeah.
So we're completely at sea as to who's gonna be
a president at a time when we think that all
of these problems we've been discussing of political correctness and
woke is um and nobody believes anything anymore, and we're
silent information. We all think all this stuff is gonna

(10:17):
get fixed by whoever is president of the United States,
and we're completely unmoored from any idea of who that
will be. Maybe it's because we've assigned such a giant
task to them, it doesn't make any sense that any
human being could do it. But what what the next
several years are gonna be like? I have no idea.

(10:40):
Troubled