Disinvited (The EEOC cancels a meeting rather than listen to criticism)

Last month, I received an invitation to testify before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about affirmative action and diversity in U.S. companies. The testimony was scheduled for today, and I was asked to share my written statement to the commission beforehand, last Thursday, which I did. Late Friday afternoon I received a phone call from the commission, telling me that because of what I had to say, my invitation had been withdrawn by its chairman, Cari M. Dominguez.

I urged the commission to reconsider this decision because it would put the commission in general and the chairman in particular in a bad light. Yesterday I was notified that the entire meeting--not just my panel, but two others--has been "indefinitely postponed."

The problem is that my testimony told the unwelcome truths that (a) American companies, in their "celebration of diversity," frequently discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity and sex, (b) this violates the law, and (c) the EEOC is not doing anything about it. I was told that it would lead to a "mutiny" among the career people at the commission if I was given a "platform" to say such things. It might even turn the proceedings that morning into a "circus," and Ms. Dominguez, I was told, did not want the EEOC "to look like the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights back when Mary Frances Berry headed it."

The irony is that the effort to silence a witness because of his political incorrectness is exactly the sort of thing that Ms. Berry might have done. Actually, it's worse. Ms. Berry, whatever her considerable shortcomings, actually did allow me to testify on more than one occasion.

IBM labels diversity a 'strategic imperative'

By VIRGINIA GALT From Monday's Globe and Mail

Toronto —

Fishing is more fun, says IBM's "dean of diversity," but golf is the game of business — which is why, he explains, Big Blue has installed putting greens at some of its on-site day-care centres.

Little girls should learn to play golf so they will not grow up to be "competitively disadvantaged," Ted Childs, global vice-president of work force diversity at International Business Machines Corp., said during a recent visit to the company's Canadian headquarters.

Their mothers are getting golf lessons, too, as IBM drives its diversity initiative in a range of new directions as part of a sweeping corporate strategy aimed at increasing IBM's appeal in the marketplace.

Right down to the games children play at the day-care centres, Mr. Childs is presiding over a cultural evolution at IBM — a company that was very white, very male and very strait-laced when he joined as an affirmative-action hire in the United States 35 years ago.

He was in Toronto earlier this month to address IBM Canada Ltd.'s women-in-leadership group and the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered group. It's "pride month" and a contingent from IBM will be marching in Toronto's annual gay pride parade at the end of June.

IBM should be a place where people feel comfortable being openly gay and where women and people from minority group backgrounds have equal opportunity for promotion and advancement, said Mr. Childs, who is black. And anyone who has a problem with that need not apply at IBM, he added.

This is driven as much by market realities as it is by a desire to do the right thing, Mr. Childs said in an interview between meetings. IBM's effort to diversify the work force "has moved from being a moral imperative to being a strategic imperative."

IBM does business in 164 countries, it has operations in 73 countries and, even in its home base of the United States, there are now more than 83 million people from visible minority backgrounds. "This is a larger group than the individual country populations of Canada, Spain, France, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Italy, Egypt, South Africa....

"Do we want to do business with those countries? The answer is yes. Do we want to do business with those 83 million? The answer is yes."

Mr. Childs said IBM believes customers are more comfortable doing business with companies that look like them and can relate to their values. The composition of IBM's 300,000-plus global work force is gradually changing, although, he said, it has some distance to go before it fully reflects the population at large.

In the company's U.S. operations last year, out of the total of 19,464 officials and managers, 14,019 were men, 5,445 were women, 1,285 were black, 1,070 were from Asian backgrounds, 586 were Hispanic and 64 were native American. Women now make up almost 30 per cent of the IBM work force worldwide; 33 per cent in Canada.

However, unless more girls pursue careers in the high-tech field, IBM will be hard-pressed to recruit enough women to reduce the gender imbalance, Mr. Childs said. To this end, in partnership with local school boards, IBM now sponsors summer tech camps for girls in Grades 7 and 8 in the hopes of hooking them before they make the decision to drop math and science in high school.

It stays in touch with these girls through "e-mentors" drawn from IBM's senior-level female ranks. The tech camps and the golf lessons for children still in day care are examples, Mr. Childs said, of long-range strategy to address current problems.

Appointed to his current position in 1991, Mr. Childs established a number of task forces in 1995 to advise IBM executives on diversification strategy. There's a task force each for women, Hispanics, blacks, Asians, native Indians, disabled people, men and the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered group. He also struck a task force to advise the company on work/life balance issues.

The diversity task forces, whose work is continuing, were each assigned to address three questions, Mr. Childs said. What is required to make members of their group feel welcome and valued at IBM? What measures can they take, in partnership with the company, to maximize their productivity? And what should IBM be doing externally to influence the purchasing decisions of their group?

In addition, IBM has a program that partners its executives with current or prospective customers from similar backgrounds. For instance, black IBM executives, in addition to their regular duties, call on black business contacts, Hispanics call on Hispanics.

"I have a couple of accounts," Mr. Childs said. "I made my first call last year ... a brother-to-brother call." It's a strategy that has gone over well with the customers, he said.

"We're going to see more companies owned by women or by ethnic minorities. If we get to them in their infancy and grow with them, that's how we'll grow," Mr. Childs said.

"It's about opportunity, the opportunity for IBM to compete."

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"Giving back to the community is as important to us as it is to you. In the past decade, IBM has given back in excess of $1 billion to a wide variety of organizations that includes ASTRAEA Lesbian Action Foundation, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (LLDEF), National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)."
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http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=592 This real life gay couple (though it's only vaguely referred to), who are also business
partners, are quoted as saying, "We're not even your ordinary pop & pop operation." The text reads: "Eight years after jettisoning the corporate life for a business of
their own, Mitch Goldstone and Carl Berman are the proud proprietors of 30 Minute Photos Etc. in Irvine, California." It ends by saying, "A perfect relationship in
more ways than one," a double meaning for their relationship as well as for IBM.

http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=754 "Yet Another Thing To Share... A new IBM Thinkpad Notebook"

http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?record=753 "Yet Another Thing To Share (female)"
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