The Rev. Jesse Jackson will press his case for workplace diversity in technology, addressing Amazon.com?s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday morning.
Lyle ?Butch? Wing, the executive director of the Silicon Valley Project in Jackson?s Rainbow Push coalition, sent out a press release Tuesday, announcing that Jackson would ?present? at the meeting.
Jackson has traveled to tech company shareholder meetings for the past several months, highlighting the dearth of minority employees at the companies and calling for strategies, such as expanding tech education in minority communities in order to be more inclusive. In December, Jackson spoke at Microsoft?s shareholder meeting, calling on the software giant to disclose more diversity data and improve minority hiring.
Jackson has also called out tech companies for the lack of transparency regarding woman and minority hiring, saying last fall that Amazon?s workforce, among others, does not ?look like America.?
Those comments came after Amazon released workplace diversity data that showed 37 percent of the company?s global workforce is female and its U.S. staff is 40 percent nonwhite. That data, though, counted the tens of thousands of employees who work at the company?s warehouses, where wages are lower than at headquarters and diversity is likely greater.
?We look forward to welcoming Rev. Jackson at our annual meeting and we agree that these are important issues,? Amazon spokesman Ty Rogers said.
Last week, Jackson spoke at Google?s shareholder meeting. According to a USA Today report, he said, ?Diversity and inclusion is a complex problem. If we put our collective minds to it, we can solve it, too,?
(Source: TNS)
