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Ford has become the latest US company to back away from policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion after coming under fire from a conservative activist.
The automaker said Wednesday it had “evolved” its employee resource groups to open them to all employees and had decided to no longer participate in a high-profile workplace ranking conducted by gay rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck said Ford was the seventh company to backtrack on its DEI programs under pressure from its boycott campaigns on X, where it has nearly 600,000 supporters, against companies it deemed too “woke.”
Starbuck obtained a message Ford sent to employees saying it had “reviewed our policies and practices to ensure they support our values, drive business results and take into account the current landscape.”
“Our communication with our employees around the world speaks for itself,” Ford said. “We have nothing more to add.”
Starbuck, a former music video director, has become a prominent conservative activist, helping lead the effort to ban gender-affirming care for transgender people in Tennessee.
He is among a growing number of conservatives who have attacked corporate diversity programs which proliferated in corporate America after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Ford Chairman Bill Ford and then-CEO Jim Hackett released… A letter a week after Floyd’s killing, saying “systemic racism still exists, despite the progress that has been made,” and pledging to partner with the Ford African Ancestry Network, one of Ford’s longest-standing employee resource groups.
“There are no easy answers,” the executives wrote at the time. “We are not interested in superficial actions. This is our time to lead from the front and fully commit to creating the fair, equitable and inclusive culture our employees deserve.”
But Starbuck described his supporters as “the silent majority” and said the movement was one “for neutrality and sanity in corporate America” which was being “poisoned by a vocal but small contingent of far-left extremists.”
“Divisional political and social issues have no place in the workplace,” she said. “Companies need customers to come through their doors to buy products, and our movement seems to have done an effective job of reminding them of that.”
Home improvement retailer Lowe’s said Monday it would stop participating in Human Rights Campaign surveys and restructure its employee resource groups after receiving messages from Starbuck.
Harley-Davidson too ended their relationships with LGBT+ advocacy groups amid a social media campaign spearheaded by Starbuck, following similar announcements by retailer Tractor Supply and tractor maker Deere & Co last month.
Last week, Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey, announced that… no longer links executive compensation to advance its diversity goals.