Apple and Amazon, two of technology’s most powerful companies, are refusing to release federal data on the diversity of their workforces. Spokeswoman Kristin Huguet declined to comment on why Apple would not release the data. For years, technology companies fought sharing any demographic information about their employees, claiming the information was a trade secret.Image may be NSFW.
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Apple, Google, Microsoft and other companies blocked the release of the data from the U.S. Department of Labor to news organizations such as the San Jose Mercury Newsthat had filed public records requests. Only in recent months have the industry’s top companies opened up about the persistent lack of diversity in their ranks.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader who urged companies to release the data, says the tech industry is entering a new era of transparency. But some companies are being more transparent than others. American companies collect and report information about their workforces to the federal government each year in a form called the EEO-1.
The EEO-1 is a standard form that breaks down race, ethnicity and gender of workforces by job classification. Facebook, eBay, Google, Yahoo and LinkedIn are among the technology companies that have made public their EEO-1s. But other companies chose instead to provide less detailed broad strokes information such as the percentage of tech workers or company managers who are women or minorities. Chief among the companies that decided not to disclose their EEO-1s were Microsoft, Twitter, Apple and Amazon.
