AT&T gives in to pressure by removing DEI policies and "woke" programs
The nation's third-largest wireless carrier is going all out to follow the current administration's attack on diversity and inclusion. For example, Michelle Jordan was the title of chief diversity officer at the company. According to her LinkedIn profile, that job title has been renamed vice president of culture and inclusion. AT&T employees working under Jordan are now members of a team that has been renamed according to a source close to AT&T.
Beyond changing names and titles, AT&T has stopped funding the Trevor Project, a group tasked with preventing suicides by LGBTQ+ youth. Along the same lines, AT&T is no longer supporting Turn Up the Love which is a Pride event that features musical artists. The carrier also has stopped telling employees to wear pins showing their favorite pronouns. These preferred pronoun pins will no longer be available at AT&T's employee stores.
AT&T is "committed to serving customers across the country, being the industry’s best connectivity provider, and making sure that all Americans can get connected to the internet and enjoy the opportunities that it provides."-AT&T
The Dallas-based company is no longer taking part in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index which measures how LGBTQ+-friendly a specific firm is. Bloomberg has obtained an internal company memo stating that training focused on DEI has stopped and has been replaced with leadership training.
The carrier will stop the practice of awarding contracts based on a DEI initiative and these contracts will be handed out based on value, quality, and function. However, AT&T will award more contracts to more small and local businesses. Instead of awarding scholarships to minority groups such as Hispanics which it has done in the past, the carrier's scholarships will now be available to all.
"AT&T has 140,000+ employees and a market cap of around $200 BILLION dollars. Those employees will now have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected and this corporate neutrality focus will also extend to their many suppliers who will no longer feel pressure to endorse woke policies."-Robbie Starbuck, anti-DEI advocate
Former music video director Robby Starbuck, who champions anti-DEI policies, posted a tweet in which he takes credit for AT&T's moves away from DEI. In the tweet, he also praises the company's executives for making what he calls "MAJOR" changes. While an executive order signed by President Donald Trump bans the use of preferred programs such as DEI in the federal government, the president said he might go after private companies for having "illegal" diversity programs.
More than two dozen companies have made changes to their DEI programs under threat of prosecution. The new FCC Chair Brendan Carr has reportedly sent letters to Verizon and Comcast demanding they end their DEI programs. The FCC is the federal agency that regulates wireless firms such as AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
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