Carhartt in Dearborn Targeted for Boycott by Anti-Vaxxers

Cancel culture wants to cancel Carhartt. Those opposed to vaccinations aren't warming up to the company's mandate for employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The United States Supreme Court has temporarily blocked President Biden's private employer mandate that would require all employers with at least 100 employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or else subject to weekly COVID testing before reporting to work. Nonetheless, outdoor apparel company Carhartt has doubled down and will be enforcing the mandate for their manufacturing facilities and retail stores.

Carhartt was founded in Detroit in 1899, with five workers and two sewing machines. Their outerwear was originally made to protect railroad workers against the cold Michigan winters. Detroit has always been a blue-collar town, and the rise of industry and commerce in the early 1900s led to Henry Ford's famous assembly line innovation in 1910 that changed everything.

Carhartt's first slogan was "Honest value for an honest dollar," and those principles still apply to the way they do business today. Believing that "our actions must always speak louder than our words because we are worn by the hardest-working people of them all," the company is holding true to a vaccine mandate for its employees. A letter sent on January 14 reads, in part,

We, and the medical community, continue to believe vaccinations are necessary to ensure a safe working environment for every associate and perhaps even their households. While we appreciate that there may be differing views, workplace safety is an area where we and the union that represents our associates cannot compromise. An unvaccinated workforce is both a people and business risk that our company is unwilling to take.
-Mark Valade, Carhartt CEO

Unsurprisingly, social media has blown up, with many die-hard Carhartt fans now calling for a boycott and saying they will never buy the company's products again. That's cold.