A national backlash against ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) is building as governors and attorneys general take action against national corporations. Amid the backlash, Color Us United continues to be flooded with complaints from workers facing discrimination at the hands of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs.
In July, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed an overhaul to prevent state fund managers from considering ESG factors when investing taxpayer funds and to prohibit banks from discriminating against consumers based on political, social and personal beliefs, according to The Wall Street Journal. The governor announced the proposal with Florida House of Representatives Speaker-designate Paul Renner to push back on what he called the "corporate elite."
"We are protecting Floridians from woke capital and asserting the authority of our constitutional system over ideological corporate power," DeSantis said.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in April urged state lawmakers to propose measures similar to the slate DeSantis proposed.
BlackRock, the largest asset manager on the planet, has come under fire from 19 state attorneys general for its efforts in ESG investments. The group is led by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the attorneys general requested the agency investigate BlackRock’s ties to China and whether it was upholding its fiduciary responsibility. Larry Fink, who has $10 trillion in assets under management, "invests in and does business with Chinese companies that often flout environmental concerns even as it pushes for U.S. companies to embrace net-zero carb emissions," the New York Post reported.
“Based on the facts currently available to us, BlackRock appears to use the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment, as well as their vote,” the AGs said in their letter. DEI programs are an important part of the investment firm’s ESG examination.
Nick Williams worked at American Express for eight years as an Iowa-based manager of business development, according to FOX News. He said he was terminated in March 2021 after refusing a corporate Amex card to a black female small business owner on the grounds that she didn't have the required documents necessary to apply. The six-figure settlement offered to him demanded his silence on the company’s policies, but he rejected the settlement so that he could sound the alarm and speak out about his experience.
According to statements provided by Color Us United executives and sources—protected to shield them from retaliation—workers have documented accounts similar to Williams' at other institutions.
"I applied for three jobs that I was extremely qualified for months after my layoff. These were jobs where I knew the computer systems intimately and the job tasks. In each case, they hired [selected minorities] with zero experience," according to one complaint. "I subsequently learned these facts and the fact that the people they hired were unqualified. When I challenged the hiring manager about this fact, I was told the persons they hired in each separate job, were a ‘better fit.’ Asian or Hispanic individuals were passed over as well."
A second person said their job was threatened.
"Our manager is a minority who takes so much time off work it is a wonder he can keep his job. Week after week of vacation and weekends, evenings and holidays off. He barely works 50% of the time," another complaint wrote. "When I complained, three managers wrote me up threatening my job… cannot fix the air conditioning or get simple problems solved because all their time, money and resources go to shoving woke-ism down our throats. It takes two months to navigate ‘on-boarding’ for new hires so we repeatedly lose candidates. They think this is progress.”
"DEI has encouraged a disruptive and victimology mentality that leads to co-workers complaining and acting against the company, encouraging the creation and exacerbation of problems rather than solutions," according to another complaint.
Alabama Business Journal reported that Color Us United said sweeping corporate policies are taking America's workplaces by storm. A publicly available LinkedIn learning series on diversity training used but not required of employees by Coca-Cola instructs people to try to "be less white." Lowe's pushed white workers to "cede power to people of color." The Salvation Army demanded workers to "repent" for the country's racism.
New polling from Color Us United and Echelon Insights found that workers at large corporations have been forced to attend so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs rather than "sales, customer service, general company procedures or other sessions that could improve their work performance."
“America was built on a foundation of ordinary people united by the task ahead. What united Americans was not race or religion or tribe, but the desire and the will to subordinate all that to make something great. We are here today because we believe in that greatness and we want to restore that trust," Color Us United President Kenny Xu said.
Zenefits, a human resources platform, said diversity and inclusion programs can have unintended consequences.
"Research has overwhelmingly shown negative messaging in D&I training not only doesn’t help, but it may also set inclusion efforts back," according to its 2019 report. "Social scientists have also found, over a number of years, that people naturally tend to rebel against enforced rules."