It comes as the Trump administration signs an executive order barring government contractors from running diversity training programs.
The US Department of Labor Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has questioned whether Microsoft’s commitment to increase the number of Black employees in its US workforce by 2025 constitutes as racial discrimination, the tech giant has revealed. In a blog post, Microsoft said the company received a letter last week from the OFCCP suggesting that its goal to double the number of Black managers, seniors, seniors individual contributors, and seniors leaders in its US workforce violates the Civil Rights Act, and that the initiative “appears to imply that the employment action may be taken on the basis of race”. However, as first reported by Axios, the company believes it is complying with the law. “Emphatically, they are not [race-based decisions],” Microsoft corporate vice president and general counsel Dev Stahlkopf stated. “We are clear that the law prohibits us from discriminating on the basis of race. We also have affirmative obligations as a company that serves 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.
