Two ex-employees of an Alabama construction company allege they were fired this week for refusing to remove Confederate flags from their vehicles.
Phillip Sims told Hunstville, Alabama TV station WHNT that he was fired Monday from Turner Industries after a plant superintendent saw the Confederate battle flag flying from his truck.
Sims said the superintendent told him “Hey, we like your work here and we like you but your flag, it’s gonna have to go.”
Sims told WHNT that he had been running late Monday and normally doesn’t drive to work with the flag flying from his vehicle. But he told the news station that he felt he made the “right decision” by refusing to remove the flag and come back to work.
“It’s a statement of our heritage and it’s just my right to have it and I don’t think that I should just give it up because somebody told me I had to,” he told WHNT.
A second worker who claimed to have been fired for displaying the Confederate flag on a vehicle asked not to be identified by WHNT. Turner Industries referred the news station’s requests for comment to its corporate attorney, who did not respond to the allegations.
Watch below via WHNT:
