Major American multinationals, including Meta and Amazon, have announced they will scale back diversity programmes. Meanwhile educational institutes and retail groups, including Walmart and McDonalds, say they will reduce ‘affirmative action’ hiring and training initiatives.
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00:00Major American multinationals including Meta and Amazon have announced they'll scale back
00:04diversity equity and inclusion or DEI programs citing legal and cultural shifts.
00:11Other major chains like Walmart and McDonald's are dropping quotas for gender and racial
00:16representation and replacing bias training with broader initiatives. Tech giant Meta cited a
00:22Supreme Court ruling which determined race conscious admissions programs were a form of
00:27discrimination. In 2023 the US Supreme Court sided with a group known as the Students for
00:33Fair Admissions which had sued Harvard and UNC claiming the schools discriminated against white
00:38and Asian American students who had SAT scores above other racial groups but who were not given
00:44priority admissions. Effectively America's highest courts struck down the right for private
00:50universities to consider race in admissions decisions. DEI programs have become divisive
00:56ever since that ruling which has prompted companies to now officially scrap their initiatives.
01:02The move is something Australian companies institutions and advocacy groups will be
01:06watching closely. In Australia affirmative action plans remain intact but overall there is a much
01:13less uniformed attempt at meeting minority needs in corporate and public Australia. In September
01:202024 the Albanese government marked 30 years since Labor introduced its affirmative action
01:25policy to enable more women to work in parliament achieving a 52% female representation. However
01:33gaps remain. The coalition has not implemented an affirmative action policy and in 2024 just 29%
01:40of its federal parliamentarians were women. Meanwhile in response to missing its indigenous
01:45workforce targets in 2024 the Australian Taxation Office also renewed its commitment
01:51to engaging with indigenous clients and including indigenous workers in its future structural plans.