Slashdot Mirror
Steve Ballmer Responds to Discrimination Issue
sriram_2001 writes "In a long email to all Microsoft employees, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laid out the reasons for Microsoft changing its stance to neutral on the anti-discrimination bill. He explains that Microsoft wanted to focus on fewer legislations and that the anti-discrimination bill was one of the bills that they didn't have the resources to follow. Also, far from caving in to Rev.Hutcherson, Microsoft told him to take a hike when he asked them to fire 2 employees for testifying during the legislation consideration period. He goes on to explain how though he personally supports the bill, a lot of employees and shareholders don't. Finally, he raises the question on whether corporations should get involved in social issues."
As long as corporations employ people who are affected by social legislation, then the difference truly is slight. Despite every impression to the contrary, first and foremost a corporation is a network of relationships among real live human beings; the money is simply an abstraction of certain types of value.
Historically, the very first laws against child labor (in the UK) were brought into existence at the behest of a coalition of factory owners, who wanted to stop the practice, but could not do so unilaterally and remain competitive: the only way that they could have the practice stop was to remove the possibility of competitive advantage from employing children. Likewise, Microsoft has gay and lesbian employees and shareholders, and their well-being is directly affected by the absence of this legislation.