Trump’s Department of Labor has opened an investigation into whether Microsoft violated federal law by
promising to hire more Black and African American managers and leaders,
ABC News reported on Wednesday.
Microsoft has faced
criticism for years about a lack of diversity everywhere from its rank and file to the executive suites, as well as accounts of a
racially hostile work environment. Corporate vice president and general counsel Dev Stahlkopf
wrote in a blog post that the DOL investigation, run by its Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), “has focused on whether Microsoft’s commitment to double the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors and senior leaders in our U.S. workforce by 2025 could constitute unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, which would violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” The DOL told Stahlkopf in a letter that the promise “appears to imply that employment action may be taken on the basis of race.”
Stahlkopf added in his statement that Microsoft’s promise to double the number of senior employees who are Black or African American is “emphatically” not a violation of labor law and the company has “every confidence that Microsoft’s diversity initiative complies fully with all U.S. employment laws.”
News of the DOL investigation follows a batshit, racist
executive order from the Trump administration on Sept. 22 that threatened federal agencies and contractors with loss of funding and contract terminations if they did not immediately act to terminate diversity training programs it contends are part of a “malign ideology.” The terms are both sweeping and subjective, banning training that promotes the idea the U.S. is “fundamentally racist or sexist” or that any individual, on the basis of their sex or race, is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”