Google, Apple Call Workers' Race & Gender Trade Secrets

theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that Google, whose stated mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released. So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials. The five companies waged a successful 18-month FOIA battle with the Merc, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause 'commercial harm' by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. Law professor John Sims called the objections — the details of which the Dept. of Labor declined to share — 'absurd.' Many industry peers see the issue differently — Intel, Cisco, eBay, AMD, Sanmina, and Sun agreed to allow the DOL to provide the requested info. 'There's nothing to hide, in our view,' said a spokesman for Intel. Some observers note it's not the first time Google has declined to put a number on its vaunted diversity — in earlier Congressional testimony, Google's top HR exec dodged the question of how many African-American employees the company had."

Comments

Business Strategy?

[mlawrence]

Is Google saying their business strategy actually differs based on the people they employ? In this context, how is that not racist?

Re:I'm pretty sure

[electrons_are_brave]

Google just doesn't want to be subjected to draconian and racist equal opportunity laws or quotas.

I'm pretty sure they are hiring people based on merit and technical ability, not race or color.

Sigh. The standard excuse for racist and sexist employment practices. Because we all know that if an employer employs on the basis of "merit" and "technical ability", women and African Americans will be largely absent given that they lack both and can be trained in neither.

Yeah, yeah, laws made to conteract bigoted employers are "draconian" and "racist". I'm surprised you didn't raise the point about how it's white men who are the underclass these days.

Posts like your's show why these laws are needed.

Solution

[postmortem]

Can't they simply count Indians as backs?

Re:Hire based on qualifications

[u38cg]

That's such outrageous bullshit it's not even funny. Was it meant to be sly sarcasm or something? Or do you actually believe that?

Re:I'm pretty sure

[tehcyder]

If they end up with an entire workforce full of white employees, perhaps an investigation should be done as to why there are no other qualified candidates in the area.

If they end up with an entire workforce full of white employees (in an area where the population is not pretty much 100% white), then the fucking company is probably fucking racist from the fucking top down.

IMHO.