FYI: If you say you don't care about politics and you ban political speech in your workspace - that on its own is a political statement that you're fine with the status quo.
* A company might find that it's employees become toxic when political disagreements happen.
* A company might find itself alienating people with minority viewpoints.
* A company may find itself losing customers because political views discussed in the workplace is attributed to the company.
This mentality that lack of political discussion in the workplace implies agreement with the status quo has negative consequences, and makes employees feel pressured to voice support for things they don't actually support in order to avoid losing face with coworkers.
Just because someone does not want to discuss something here and now, doesn't invalidate that they have original opinions. Not everything is a dichotomy all the time. Plenty of people who are not fine with the status quo don't want to discuss it at work.
If these issues, such as where you use the toilet, what you wear to work, what documentation you are provided, are relevant to your work-place, I would suggest that they are not "political" topics, but instead workplace topics and could, and should, be broached. However, I don't know GitLab's stance on this.
That being said, I do agree with you that all of these things are political, as well as who is causing the issues. However, your coworkers might not, and there might be very good reasons to continue to work with such people.
Literally anything that can affect someone's life is political.
- you think political speech isn't useful for changing the status quo
- you think the political speech that will probably take place will lead to a world worse than the status quo, in the opposite direction of which you want it to go (this doesn't just mean "I think my coworkers are of the wrong party" but also "I think the world should be less politically divided")
- you think political speech will change the world for the better, but you also just hate political speech even more than you hate the status quo
You left out a reason: that the workplace is for getting work done, not for arguing about politics.
It does not exist in a vacuum no matter how hard you try to put it there.
The workplace is a place for getting work done. Arguing about politics is not getting work done. Unless your workplace is Congress, I guess, although they seem to argue a lot but don't get any work done.
When I see people saying things like "everything is political so politics is part of the workplace", I translate that as "I would rather argue about politics than be productive". Or, alternatively, "I would rather argue about how other people should use their time and energy and money, than actually do the hard work of using my own".
Trump making it harder for h1bs to get citizenship will impact how h1b workers feel in the company.
Supreme Court deciding on if abortion should remain legal or not will impact a lot of people in their workplace.
I'm sorry, but you seem like the type of person who knows the country isnt going to drastically make it harder to live for them. It's easy for people in that position to see work as...just work.
If that's not the case with you I apologize. But what happens with politics 100 percent impacts me at work and I should be able to talk about it.
What happens with politics impacts me at work too, but my response is not to spend time talking about it at work. My response at work is to make my work valuable to my employer. My response outside of work is none of my employer's business.