When Laura Wittmann decided this week to submit her resignation from Uline, the giant office supply company owned by two of the biggest donors to Donald Trump’s 2024 election and other Maga Republicans, she did not hold back.
“As America descends rapidly into fascism,” Wittmann wrote in a two-page company-wide email sent on Wednesday, “I can no longer work to grow the personal fortunes of people who helped make it so.
Working for the multi-billion dollar privately-held company had become untenable for the 32-year-old Canadian in the aftermath of the recent killing of Renee Good, a mother, and Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, by border patrol agents in Minneapolis, she told the Guardian in an interview.
Wittmann is based in Ontario and worked in customer service for Uline, which is headquartered in Wisconsin, for four and a half years. She was on a leadership track.
In a disclaimer included in the letter, she said her statements about Liz and Dick Uihlein, the company’s founders and owners, were based on her own opinion, and that all claims about their political relationships and donations are alleged. She urged people to Google their record.
“The most insidious form of evil is that which hides behind outward decorum, concealing the violence of its intent behind written policy, monetary donations, and old-fashioned principle. It’s easy to see the evil of those who are outwardly violent, tactless, and crude, but it’s harder to see the evil of the frail old man and his wife, who comes around once a year to rearrange our paintings,” she wrote.
The political activities of the Uihleins, who recently hosted a speech by Vice-President JD Vance in their Allentown, Pennsylvania facility, are well known.
The couple are ranked as the fourth largest donors in the 2024 election cycle, having donated $139m to Maga Republicans and their political action committees, according to Opensecrets, which tracks money in politics.
Liz Uihlein in particular is known for the pointed letters she includes in the company’s thick hundred-pages long catalogues, which she signs. One missive in 2022 criticized workers who were leaving the company after less than two years of employment, given the “precious resources” used to train them.
She called them “nomads” and blamed the Affordable Care Act – which has been gutted in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term – for allowing young adults to remain on their parents insurance until age 26 and “go where the grass looks greener”. She blamed parents who “pay for their kids’ phone bill, car insurance and streaming services” who ought instead to “kick them out of the nest so they can learn to fly”. She also blamed stimulus checks, which meant “people didn’t get off their couches to work”.
In her resignation, Wittmann referenced the 2022 “nomad” letter, saying she believed it was a sign of the disdain Liz Uihlein felt toward people who elected to leave. Wittmann wrote in her letter that workers should consider their higher-than-average pay not as an act of generosity as it is framed by Uline, but instead an “assurance of compliance”.
She wrote: “I truly believe that the Uihleins and others like them are the biggest threat to global peace, equity, and quality of life. With their money and influence, they could sway politicians against the horrors unfolding in their own backyard” she wrote. Instead they support the people and organizations “committing the horrors”.
Uline declined to comment.
The resignation letter was removed from workers’ emails about 40 minutes after it was sent, Wittmann was told by some of her now-former colleagues. A copy of the letter, which was printed by someone who received it before it was deleted, was shared with the Guardian and published on Reddit.
Wittmann’s decision to speak her mind was also influenced by a recent trip to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where she learned more about how few consequences were felt by individuals who committed atrocities in the war and domestically, including in the aftermath of the Kent State massacre, when 28 national guardsmen opened fire on anti-Vietnam protesters and killed four students.
“What has changed since then? Or more importantly, what will ever change if we are too afraid to speak out and accept some personal risk?” she wrote. “This email is the least I can do.”
In her letter, Wittmann included a call for defiance from other Uline employees. “What is happening now in America and across the territories they invade is either by the design or the indifference of people like the Uihleins,” she wrote. “The system will never change if we continue to work under them and allow their kind to succeed. However small or passive a role we might play, Uline employees are all parts in the American imperialist war machine.”
“I’ve always been interested in social justice,” Wittmann said by phone. She may go back to school, she said, or just take some time to figure it out. She was bolstered by positive feedback she received from former co-workers and also people in Wisconsin, who found her letter on Reddit and reached out to her.
Wittmann also said she received a voicemail from Uline saying they accepted her resignation and that it was effective immediately. Wittmann said she was not expecting to be paid severance, under the circumstances, and said she felt fortunate to be in a position where she could afford to “take a hit”.
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