A leaked video in which the head of IBM said executives’ compensation should be tied to their utilization of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”-based hiring practices is being slammed on social media.
The leaked video shows CEO of IBM Arvind Krishna discussing the policy with Paul Cormier, CEO of IBM subsidiary Red Hat, and Allison Showalter, Red Hat’s senior director of corporate communications. The conference call was posted to X by investigative reporter James O’Keefe, which prompted a response by Elon Musk, who called the directive “extremely concerning and obviously illegal.”
BREAKING LEAKED VIDEO: CEO of IBM @ArvindKrishna admits to using coercion to fire people and take away their bonuses unless they discriminate in the hiring process.
“You got to move both forward by a percentage that leads to a plus on your bonus," Krishna said about hiring… pic.twitter.com/UUK26HX8IP
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) December 12, 2023
O’Keefe said in the post that the video, which was recorded in 2021, was recently provided to him by IBM insiders.
Krishna explained on the call that IBM’s bonus compensation policy for executives is tied to hitting certain goals for hiring based on race and gender.
“So we take underrepresented and gender. You got to move both forward by a percentage. That leads to a plus on your bonus. By the way, if you lose, you lose part of your bonus.”
“So for blacks, we should try to get to, what, 13-point-something-%; on Hispanics, you got to get into the mid-teens,” Krishna specified.
“Let me say it: Asians in the U.S. are not an underrepresented minority in a tech company,” Krishna, who is Asian himself, remarked, implying that he considered a race-based quota for that population effectively redundant.
O’Keefe noted in the X post that the video revelation comes on the heels of IBM pulling ads from X over allegations of “racism” on the platform.
Cormier is seen on the video endorsing Krishna’s directives, giving examples of how Red Hat had already let go of some executives who did not agree to hire based on racial quotas. He also noted that the company had created a senior DEI role in order to entrench the policy into the corporate culture.
“I could name multiple leaders over the last year plus, that were held accountable to the point that they’re no longer here at Red Hat because they weren’t willing to live up to the standards that we set in this space,” Cormier said in the video.
“For example, one of the changes I made, I named a DE&I lead person Margaret reporting directly to me and the [corporate leadership team]. … We’re never going to cross the DEI off our list of priorities. This is an ongoing thing,” he continued.
O’Keefe noted in his narration that terminating executives for not based on race is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employer discrimination on the basis of race.
The Dallas Express reached out to Krishna for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
The ramifications of DEI policies are not limited to whether they violate civil rights law, as Elon Musk noted in his comment on O’Keefe’s expose. A recent Revolver investigation into aviation safety found that employing air traffic controllers based on race may be contributing to an increase in major safety lapses and near misses involving planes, both in the skies and on the runway.
