However, a few representatives have bucked the trend of silence and spoke out, drawing attention to the way tech failed people of color and women this year. The Congressional Black Caucus wrote to the United States’ Acting Secretary of Labor, Julie Sue, to draw the Department of Labor’s attention to this year’s unprecedented tech layoffs, which saw nearly a quarter of a million jobs disappear. Of those losing jobs, a disproportionate number of workers were non-white employees and women. They want to know what can be done to ensure this trend reverses course now, and if the Department of Labor will do anything to improve diversity in the workplace.
An Even More Homogeneous Workplace
Tech layoffs hit over 240,000 people this year, and that’s just from the larger companies. Many smaller companies and startups also downsized. Some tried to push out more senior roles, as their salaries were larger, but many went after less technical or lower-level employees. Due to bias in hiring and promotions, these are more likely to be women and racial minorities. That’s why, despite making up a smaller part of the tech sector, these marginalized groups made up a disproportionately large amount of the number of employees laid off. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) wants to know what the Department of Labor will do to protect workers, and ensure equity going forward.
“Laying off the most recent hires directly impacts groups of people who benefited from new diversity policies implemented in response to heightened race-based conversations in 2020.”
– CBC
This is one of those things that is a symptom of a systematic issue. While companies may not have wanted to directly impact minority groups, systematic issues that keep marginalized employees in lower-level positions means they’re the first out the door.
In data storage terms, a perfect system would be a “queue,” with employees rising up, and retiring on their own terms. Instead, this is a “stack,” last in, first out. Such a system means employees who were hired during periods of increased diversity and inclusion initiatives in 2020 now find themselves without employment during one of the worst times to be an unemployed tech employee in the past two decades. I have friends, former coworkers, who have been unemployed for the better part of a year. By increasing headcount during the pandemic with an interest in improving diversity, and then cutting back on those employees, companies have, inadvertently, put some employees in a worse position than they were at the beginning of the pandemic.
Investigation and Change Required
This realization means we need to spend more time strengthening diversity and inclusion. People from all walks of life need to be at every level. Last week, the CBC called out OpenAI, as the board has no women or people of color. As OpenAI scrapes content from the entire web, sometimes from potentially dubious sources, and AI has been shown to reinforce dangerous stereotypes, diversity in the production of it is a necessary requirement, not a “nice to have.”
The letter was initially sent to the Department of Labor on December 15th. TechCrunch reached out to the DOL, who responded, “We can confirm that we have received the letter and are reviewing it.” The slower response is in stark contrast to the letter asking the DOJ to investigate Apple’s closing of a security flaw and getting the non-issue investigated within a week, with the FTC chiming in as well.
Sources:
- Ashlee Banks, The Grio
- Dominic-Madori Davis, TechCrunch
- William Gallagher, AppleInsider
- Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac