'Blacks Need Not Apply' sign would fit Oracle HQ, suit claims but cheap visas AOK

'Blacks Need Not Apply' sign would fit Oracle HQ, suit claims but cheap visas AOK

Clipped from: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/06/blacks-need-not-apply-sign-would-be-appropriate-for-oracle-hq-lawsuit-claims/ 

Shareholder claims firm has talked diversity but has been ‘miserable failure’ on it 

Oracle talks the diversity talk but doesn’t walk the walk, and that’s hurting the company, a lawsuit claims. 

“A sign advising applicants ‘Blacks Need Not Apply’ might as well hang at the entrance to the company’s headquarters,” the suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against the Redwood City software titan alleges. 

The legal action by a shareholder against the company and its board of directors cites a 2019 regulatory filing by Oracle that says, “Diversity and inclusion in our workforce starts at the top.” The suit includes names and photos of the company’s 14 board members. 

“Oracle’s board, which has no Black individuals, has consciously failed to carry out Oracle’s written proclamations about increasing diversity in its ranks,” the suit claims, noting that Oracle was founded in 1977. “Oracle’s board today in 2020 has no African‐Americans and no Latinos, and no Asian‐American or other minority representatives aside from Vishal Sikka. The company’s executive ranks also lack a single Black person. 

“Oracle has no real commitment to diversity and its board is turning a blind eye to the company’s miserable failure to ensure the ‘diversity’ trumpeted by the directors in Oracle’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and its annual reports to shareholders.” 

Oracle declined to comment on the lawsuit’s claims. 

The suit points to two Congressional inquiries into the make-up of Oracle’s board, one of which led to a letter last year from the House Tech Accountability Caucus that said, “The fact that African Americans make up 13% and Asian Americans make up 5.6% of the U.S. population but 0% of Oracle’s board and leadership team is inexcusable.” 

A lawsuit by news outlet Reveal “showed that Oracle’s workforce, as of 2015, was 90% white or Asian,” the suit alleges. 

The suit notes that Oracle is also being sued by the U.S. Department of Labor, which alleged in a filing last year that the company systematically favored Asians in hiring, and paid women, Blacks and Asians less, with pay disparities costing workers more than $400 million in lost wages. Oracle has denied that claim, shareholder R. Andre Klein’s suit acknowledges. 

Directors’ alleged “misconduct” led to “severe financial and reputational damage to Oracle,” his suit claims, adding that the federal government is seeking “hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay for affected minorities, including Black individuals.” 

The lawsuit is demanding that three Oracle directors resign and that the company nominate three replacements, two of them Black and one from a different minority group. It also demands that the directors donate all their 2020 compensation to “an acceptable charity or organization whose efforts include the advancement of Black people and minorities in corporate America.”