WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal’s (AFL) Center for Legal Equality filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Salesforce, Inc., for engaging in unlawful race and sex based discrimination. AFL also sent a letter to Salesforce’s Board of Directors demanding that the Company’s management stop violating its fiduciary duty to shareholders.
Salesforce openly admits to racial, sexual, and gender discrimination in its recruitment and hiring programs. Since at least 2019, Salesforce has engaged in discriminatory hiring and promotion processes using a “Racial Equity and Justice Taskforce.”
Moreover, in the spring of 2023, Salesforce announced the launch of a new gender-discriminatory hiring program designed to favor candidates identifying as “non-binary” or “female.” Salesforce lists its desired hiring outcomes or quotas as the following:
To enforce these hiring quotas, Salesforce brags that it includes “representation goals as part of our executive compensation programs.” Salesforce even published data showing successful discrimination in its recruitment process with year-over-year increases from 2021 to 2022 in the hiring of “Latinx, Women, and Black” new workers of roughly 21%, 13%, and 5% respectively.
Further, to help Salesforce achieve its desired sex and race “balance,” the company has created “equality groups.” For example, the “BOLDforce” is designed to “expand and empower the Salesforce black community,” while the “Women’s Network,” is designed to “amplif[y] the progress of women in every step of their journey … through professional and personal development.” Tellingly, there are no comparable programs for white or male employees.
For too long, major corporations have openly and proudly violated Title VII and engaged in illegal race and sex-based discrimination; AFL is taking action.
Read the EEOC letter here and the Board of Directors letter here.
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