Microsoft Plan to Add Black Executives Draws U.S. Labor Inquiry

Microsoft Corp. said the U.S. Labor Department is questioning whether its commitment to promote more Black managers and executives violates civil rights laws. The software maker said it’s confident the diversity pledges are legal.

The company, whose contracts with the U.S. government mean it must comply with certain federal requirements on employment practices, said it was contacted last week by the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Microsoft said in June that it would double the number of Black and African American managers, senior contributors and senior leaders in the U.S. by 2025.

The government’s questions have focused on whether that program “could constitute unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, which would violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,” Microsoft General Counsel Dev Stahlkopf wrote Tuesday in a blog post. “We have every confidence that Microsoft’s diversity initiative complies fully with all U.S. employment laws. We look forward to providing the OFCCP with this information and, if necessary, defending our approach.”

The federal outreach to Microsoft is an example of the Trump administration’s opposition to many programs meant to fight discrimination against the Black community and improve the poor track record of many U.S. companies in hiring, retaining and promoting Black employees. On Sept. 28, OFCCP announced it had created telephone and email hotlines for employees to report “offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating,” as part of the enforcement of a recent executive order from President Donald Trump banning federal contractors from conducting “divisive” trainings. Trump’s order labels as divisive concepts including the idea that “the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist” or that an individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”

Read more: Once-Elusive Corporate Racial Data Are Finally Trickling Out

In September, after Princeton University’s president wrote in an announcement about the school’s anti-racism efforts that “racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society,” the U.S. Department of Education announced it was opening an investigation of the university. “You admitted Princeton’s educational program is and for decades has been racist,” an assistant secretary of education wrote in a letter to the president. The assistant secretary said the university’s “admitted racism” meant it may have been knowingly lying when it provided nondiscrimination assurances to the U.S. government as part of its participation in federal programs.

Other companies, including some with federal contracts, have announced similar diversity programs. Google aims to have 30% more leaders from “underrepresented groups” by 2025, and Boeing Co. has said it is targeting increasing the representation rate of Black employees by 20% while boosting other underrepresented groups over the next three years. 

Microsoft said the letter suggested that the diversity initiative “appears to imply that employment action may be taken on the basis of race” and asked  the software maker to prove that its actions are not illegal race-based decisions, Stahlkopf  wrote. 

“We are clear that the law prohibits us from discriminating on the basis of race,” she wrote. “We also have affirmative obligations as a company that serve the federal government to continue to increase the diversity of our workforce, and we take those obligations very seriously. We have decades of experience and know full well how to appropriately create opportunities for people without taking away opportunities from others.”

 

 

— With assistance by Jeff Green, and Paige Smith

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