U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday urged Apple, opens new tab to scrap its DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) policies, a day after AAPL shareholders voted against ceasing DEI efforts.
Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled in SFFA v. Harvard that discriminating on the basis of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
As a result, the legality of corporate DEI programs was called into question and 13 Attorneys General warned that SFFA implicated corporate DEI programs.
This year, those implications widened when the Supreme Court ruled in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protected against discriminatory job transfers. The ruling also lowered the bar for employees to successfully sue their employers for discrimination, and is therefore likely to lead to an increase in discrimination claims.
Since SFFA, a number of DEI‑related lawsuits have been filed. Starbucks was successfully sued for discrimination by an employee for $25.6 million, and the risk of being sued for such discrimination is rising.
Many major companies have responded by rolling back their DEI commitments and laying off DEI departments. Alphabet and Meta cut DEI staff and DEI‑related investments; and Microsoft and Zoom laid off their entire DEI teams. Since Muldrow, John Deere publicly halted DEI‑related policies after Tractor Supply explicitly stated that it would “eliminate DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals;” Lowe’s and Ford ended their participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality (CEI); Harley Davidson ceased its DEI efforts; and Jack Daniels ended both its DEI efforts and CEI participation.
Reuters:
Trump has criticized corporate DEI programs as discriminatory and suggested the U.S. Department of Justice could investigate if such efforts violate the law.
Proponents of the proposal against DEI argued that recent legal changes meant Apple would see an increase in discrimination cases if it continued such policies.
Apple has said it had an active oversight effort to avoid legal risks and that the proposal inappropriately restricted management.
CEO Tim Cook said at Tuesday’s meeting that Apple’s “strength has always come from hiring the very best people and then providing a culture of collaboration, one where people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives come together to innovate.” But he also said, “As the legal landscape around these issues evolves, we may need to make some changes to comply…”
MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprisingly, Tim Cook cannot read the room; an anachronism clinging to an anachronism.
If, during his last decade plus of leading Apple, Cook spent 10% of the effort on Siri — which would have long ago led Apple directly, and very likely first, to genAI — as he does on his failed social engineering boondoggles, the company and Apple product users would be in a far, far better situation today.
Instead, enjoy your Apple Intelligence vaporware as Apple coders, over a period years, frantically pump it out in dribs and drabs years late. Siri today is basically the same half-baked, unreliable parlor trick it was on the day Tim Cook inherited it. So much promise squandered (which describes Apple’s Tim Cook era in a nutshell).
Getting the absolute best people should remain Apple’s ultimate goal. Forced diversity carries its own set of problems. Would the group be comprised of the best-qualifed people possible or would it be designed to hit pre-defined quotas? Would some employees, consciously or unconsciously, consider certain employees, or even themselves, to be tokens meant to fill a quota? That would be a suboptimal result for Apple and everyone involved.
The best and desired outcome is for the quest for diversity to work in Apple’s favor. Truly looking at qualified people from a larger pool would likely result in delivering different viewpoints and new ways of looking at things and tackling problems than a more homogenized workforce would likely be capable of delivering.
Regardless and of course, someday it sure would be nice for everyone to just be able to evaluate a person’s potential, not measuring and tabulating superficial, meaningless things like skin color and gender.
How do we ever get to the point where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” when we insist on judging people by the color of their skin? — MacDailyNews, December 31, 2015
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As someone who loves Apple for what it was under Steve Jobs, I really cannot wait for Tim Cook to retire. But, unfortunately, I guarantee Cook will name himself Chairman of the Board and we’ll be stuck with his wrongheaded, waste of time virtue-signaling, do-nothing BS for years after he installs another nondescript, visionless CEO clone of himself.
Tim Cook, who would have been a great 3-5 year stopgap until Apple found a real visionary CEO, but who instead clings to power, has clearly become Apple’s albatross.
Apple’s Tim Cook era in a nutshell:
“So much promise squandered.”
Today is the day I stop reading macdailynews.
What took you so long?
“Drake,” this being the 5th comment in our 23-year history posted from your IP address (under five different unregistered names, no less) – maintaining the blistering average pace of one comment every half decade – highlights the magnitude of the purported loss of your readership.
Tim Cook leaves much to be desired but at the end of the day he’s a business man that made the absolute most of what Jobs left him to the extent his skillset allowed. Absent a rock-solid candidate I’m not bitching for a replacement yet. Given what we’ve seen over just the past few months I think a Musk would have been a disaster for such a focused and conservative company as Apple (political window-dressing aside, they are VERY cautious and resistant to dramatic moves, to their credit).
Very few people appreciate how mature of a company Apple is and at this stage radical new directions and projects are not on the menu like they were when Apple was 20x smaller than it is now. Cook is great at the dead-boring number crunching, pricing, contracts and logistics that most of his job consists of. You won’t find someone who does what Cook excels at AND is a flashy visionary (Jobs couldn’t have done what he did in his final decade without Cook). If the choice is between Cook and rolling the dice with the world’s most valuable company, the choice is obvious.
Although Cook is a non-device-guy and invention and iteration throughout his tenure has been wanting, the proposition of Musk meshing with AAPL’s proven conservative MO would have been very risky.
As well, Cook’s financialization of the company has rotted Apple’s vaulted story (that’s right, it ain’t just about EPS), he has “made the absolute most of what Jobs left him” and a knee-jerk change would be just that; knee-jerking.
Cook has been gifted profoundly via Job’s design/invention and company DNA, but also the last 4-5 yrs of flooding the market per the Fed’s silly monetary policies…and stockholder’s bags have budged as a result. Take these away and it’s not hard to conceive that public perception of Cook would/could be very diff…nowhere near as positive.
DEI is racism against asians and whites. Anyone for DEI is an avowed racist.
DEI must DIE DIE DIE
Merit is all that matters. Steve Jobs knew as much.
I dont care if the NBA is mostly black, and I wouldn’t care if our colleges and Apple were mostly asian. All I care is those with merit get rewarded.
Everything else is bs racism.
And apple is now racist AF. Shame on you apple. Shame.
I’ve often heard DEI to be Cultural Marxism. It’s thought provoking and ties to the greatest deal tolls in modern times. Are DEI supporters killers? No, not necessarily, but there is the same “whatever it takes” mindset within. The WIT mentality is provoked to move upon an issue regardless of severity or legality IF it is deemed the issue justifies the action. The problem, there’s no Absolute driving the issues and the interpretations and interpreters run the scale of opinion/values. Dreadful whimsy is in the genetic line.
Zombie comes alive! “I don’t care if…(NBA)…yes.
If you white racist treated people of other races equally then DEI was not needed.
Illogic used as reason for rascism, after the fact…so Powermac advocates.
Take that silly mindset to its logical end (required for best action/decisions), people/races/cultures ALL OVER the World would spend endless time and resources “rectifying” the ills of one done to another.
I for one, am Irish. Are you aware of the terror put upon the Irish in their “homeland” and the terror imposed upon them in America upon 1st arrival? They were slaves, for one.
I have absolutely no impulse to request/demand retribution or any action to rectify. There’s no way to define rectification. It would/could go on and on and on…just like the convo here per reparations.
Humans have been deathly inconsiderate forever. To think it can be fixed is typical liberal planning…idylic, fantastical, and impractical. Emotional vs realistic.
If racists like you would realize what you just said was laughably racist, you’d cancel yourself. Lol. Bozo.
Indeed, the name you give yourself is perfectly appropriate…
America WTF is wrong with you? How far have you fallen to idolize a rapist convicted felon? Amazing