The National Black Farmers Association called on Tractor Supply’s president and CEO Tuesday to step down after the rural retailer announced that it would drop most of its corporate diversity and climate advocacy efforts.
The resignation demand emerged as Tractor Supply, which sells products ranging from farming equipment to pet supplies, faces a deepening backlash over its decision, which itself came after conservative activists spoke out against the company’s work to be more socially inclusive and to curb climate change.
In a public announcement last week, the company said it would eliminate all of its diversity, equity and inclusion roles, end sponsorships of “nonbusiness activities” like Pride festivals, and withdraw its goals for reducing carbon emissions. Critics of the new position argue that Tractor Supply is giving in to hate and harming its customers by abandoning crucial principles.
Most of the programs exist to avoid lawsuits. They don’t actually help much of anything. And before people jump down my throat I’m not against the idea of what DEI claims to fix in corporate America. I just know from the level I’ve worked at multiple companies that leadership doesn’t really care. DEI is another box to check for the shareholders to feel good about themselves.
So tl;dr DEI is mostly pointless. Leadership allows people to talk about DEI because talk is cheap and ineffectual. But they shit their pants of we try to unionize and force change. So stop focusing on DEI and start focusing on unionization.
I just know from the level I’ve worked at multiple companies that leadership doesn’t really care. DEI is another box to check for the shareholders to feel good about themselves.
I’m confused, are you saying places with DEI policies don’t actually hire more black or gay employees and just pretend like they do, or that they do hire more diverse employees but the management don’t really care about that and are just hiring more diverse employees because they think that protects them from lawsuits?
Some of both.
Great talk I skipped to an important part of which will likely explain better than I am. Whole video is worth watching if you have time. https://youtu.be/deYUUfak08Y?feature=shared&t=7m54s
But in essence, leadership will say they care about DEI. But then doesn’t set any goals or timeframes. Then what I’ve seen a few times is the responsibility for the initiatives get pushed to lower level people who have no authority to bring about much of any change. Leadership gets to pat themselves on the back while doing nothing.
Going to watch the video but my experience has been that the programs do nothing to influence advancement opportunities and negatively impact hiring actions. What it does do is make it nearly impossible to move on from a diversity employee. Just last year my former employer finally had a black woman retire and was able to hire a full time engineer in her place. She was a UNIX administrator for a couple decades, got pissed when the organization started replacing end points with windows and Linux and once NIS was replaced spent the last 20 years of her career coming into work, putting her feet up on the desk and reading a book until she left to go home, nothing for her to do, they didn’t have UNIX anymore and she wasn’t going to touch anything else, not even the Linux systems. I mean good for her, I don’t give a shit about my former employer, she was very friendly and intelligent and I enjoyed stopping by and hanging out with her during breaks sometimes but she would have been gone in a week at most if she wasn’t a diversity employee. That is the most extreme example I have directly experienced but it is an entirely different conversation, bordering on impossible, if a diversity employee needs let go so what ends up happening is hiring a diverse employee is almost like putting your career on the line that they succeed whereas a non diverse employee that is hired and isn’t performing can been given a 30 day PIP, 30 day final written warning, and then part ways.
