FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Minority Groups Seek FCC Investigation of Silicon Valley Giants that Discriminate Against Minorities and Women
The Black Economic Council joined by Latino Business Chamber of Greater LA and Mabuhay Alliance formally requested an investigation by the FCC on Silicon Valley Corporations for discrimination against minorities and women
The request is the San Jose Mercury News investigation reported on February 14, 2010 entitled, "Blacks, Latinos and Women Lose Ground at Silicon Valley Tech Companies." The data collected or attempted to collect from the giant Silicon Valley companies that often seek preferences and favorable treatment from the FCC include: AMD, Apple, Calpine, Cisco Systems, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Oracle, Sanmina, Solectron, Sun Microsystems, SYNNEX and Yahoo.
The data demonstrates that Silicon Valley giants have:
· The lowest employment rates for African-Americans among Fortune 500 corporations-1.5%;
· The lowest employment rates for Latinos of any Fortune 500 corporation doing significant businesses in California (4.7% for Latinos vs. a Latino population in California of 38%); and
· One of the lowest rates amongst Fortune 500 corporations for women--24% (According to the US Department of Labor statistics women constitute 50.3% of the non-agricultural workforce and 51% of recent college graduates.)
Even more disturbing is that these Silicon Valley technological giants had substantial declines in the percent of African American, Latino and women management workers: 30% decline over a five year period among Blacks, 25% over a five year period among Hispanics and an almost 20% decline among women.
Similar exclusions exist among many Asian American subgroups. However, Silicon Valley has hidden this discrimination through a lack of transparency and manipulation of data. For example, Silicon Valley improperly includes the huge number of H1-B foreign workers within its Asian American category. Upon information and belief, we are prepared to prove that two of the largest Asian American groups, Vietnamese-Americans and Filipino-Americans, are discriminated against. Similarly, we are prepared to show that Samoan, Thai, Cambodian and Hmong Americans are discriminated against.
Using eBay as a typical example, it employs only 2% Blacks, 4% Latinos and 37% women. Its percentage of women declined by over 15% between 2000 and 2005 and its percentage of Latinos was cut in half from 2000 to 2005 according to the San Jose Mercury.
As the FCC is aware from the prior filing by Mabuhay in October 2009 with the FCC, many competitors to Silicon Valley that use the same worker pool have far better records. This includes Verizon, AT&T and the newest competitor Wal-Mart.
Google and Others Censor Data
According to the San Jose Mercury data, Google, Apple and other transparency proponents refused to provide data that they are required to keep by the EEOC. Sadly, when the San Jose Mercury sought to secure this data, Google, Apple and others blocked the San Jose Mercury from securing the data.
These efforts at censorship of unfavorable employment data and efforts similar to these, appear to be in conflict with Silicon Valley's regulatory requests predicated on the need for transparency and open networks.
Refusal to Contract with Women and Minority Owned Businesses
The Black Economic council, Latino Business Chamber of Greater LA and Mabuhay Alliance are prepared to prove that the Silicon Valley technology giants do not provide a fair share of small business contracts to Blacks, Latinos, women and most Asian American owned businesses. We have also previously provided to the FCC data from Silicon Valley competitors that demonstrate the contract success of these competitors.
No Transparency and Little Philanthropy to Underserved Communities
Today, most Fortune 500 corporations provide comprehensive data on their philanthropy to underserved communities including philanthropy enhancing broadband access to underserved communities. This list of transparent companies includes many competitors and potential competitors of these Silicon Valley companies such as Wal-Mart, which has philanthropic grants of almost $500 million a year. In contrast to these competitors, few, if any Silicon Valley companies provide any transparency as to their philanthropy.
Further, many Silicon Valley companies in comparison to their competitors, provide few grants to minority nonprofits. For example AT&T and Verizon provide over 80% of their philanthropy to underserved communities with a heavy focus on minority led nonprofits.
2. Minorities Request Immediate FCC Investigation
The request made by the minority groups to the FCC includes the following
A) Silicon Valley companies that discriminate against, exclude or fail to hire from the vast majority of our nation's workforce be denied by all federal regulatory agencies any competitive advantages.
B) All Silicon Valley companies benefiting from FCC actions or participating in FCC filings or hearings should be required to document in a public and transparent fashion that they are truly transparent and equal opportunity employers before they engage in competitive battles against equal opportunity employers.
C) Public hearings to be held in the Silicon Valley within 45 days on this subject. All major Silicon Valley CEOs should be required to appear and provide comprehensive data 10 days in advance of the hearing.
3. Additional Actions Sought by the Aggrieved Parties
Separate from this action:
· Filing with the Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Caucus chairpersons a request for a joint Congressional hearing by the three minority caucuses.
· Similar requests will be filed with the 17 women US Senators including the two Senators from California, Senators Boxer and Feinstein.
· The Department of Justice, through US Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez, will be requested to conduct a comprehensive investigation and immediately secure and make public all data for the years 1999 through 2009. The requests will be for this data to be broken down by race, ethnicity and gender including subgroups for Asian Americans.
· The Department of Justice and the EEOC will be asked to conduct similar investigations and to make the data readily available.
On behalf of 110 million US minorities and a workforce that is now a majority of women, including a majority women college graduates including at the graduate school level, The Black Economic council, Latino Business Chamber of Greater LA and Mabuhay Alliance urge that all the actions set forth in their formal complaint to the FCC Commissioners, be commenced within 30 days.
About the Black Economic Council (BEC)
The Black Economic Council (BEC) is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization created to provide Black Americans an economic platform that facilitates business formation, job creation, access to capital, home ownership, affordable housing, financial fitness and equal opportunity for employment in the workforce. The mission of the BEC is to promote the self-sufficiency of Black-American communities through structured economic development.
CONTACT:
Yolanda Lewis, Director of Technology
Black Economic Council
Yolanda.lewis@blackeconomiccouncil.org
No charge event registration is available online at www.blackeconomiccouncil.org
