b*****d
发帖数: 61690 | 1 Some Microsoft employees are frustrated with the company’s response about
its contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and say that
they’re planning to press the company harder.
Two employees that The Hill spoke with on Wednesday said that they intend to
take further action following CEO Satya Nadella’s all-staff email to
employees on Tuesday night about the company’s $19.4 million ICE contract.
The letter came in response to an open letter from Microsoft employees
urging Microsoft to end its contract with ICE and institute a policy against
working with clients that break international human rights law.
In his email, Nadella said that Microsoft criticized ICE’s practice of
separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border, but did not say that the
company would end the contract.
“The response was empty. It was shallow. He just said ‘we denounce it.’
It didn’t do anything,” said one of the employees who was involved in
creating the open letter urging Microsoft to drop the contract.
The letter was first reported by The New York Times and subsequently
obtained by The Hill.
The employee said that he and others were planning a follow-up response to
express their displeasure with Nadella’s email but said that they had not
yet decided on a specific course of action.
Another employee that The Hill spoke with said that they and several co-
workers were planning on organizing an effort against the contract at the
forthcoming meeting for MSPAC, Microsoft’s political action committee.
The employee also expressed displeasure with Nadella’s response, praising
the sentiment but criticizing its lack of action.
The Tech Workers Coalition, a labor group for tech workers which some
Microsoft employees are members of, voiced its support for employee efforts
on Wednesday.
“We stand in solidarity with Microsoft workers who commit to never ‘just
follow orders’ but to hold ourselves, each other, and the industry
accountable,” a Tech Workers Coalition spokesperson said in a statement to
The Hill. “Detaining children in cages is against what the majority of tech
workers stand for, and they don’t want to provide the technology that
enables that to happen."
Some Microsoft employees began mobilizing to oppose the contract after
critics tweeted out a January blog post from Microsoft detailing its Azure
services work with ICE.
The post struck a chord with employees who are opposed to ICE’s work
generally, as well as its practice of separating families obtained illegally
at the border.
Several other Microsoft employees The Hill spoke with earlier in the week
and prior to Nadella’s email also criticized Microsoft’s contract with ICE
and said that they hoped that the company would end it. Some said that
other employees had expressed outrage over the contract in the company’s
internal chat.
Nadella sent a company-wide email to employees on Wednesday in response to
the open letter from workers asking that Microsoft drop its ICE contract.
“I want to be clear: Microsoft is not working with the U.S. government on
any projects related to separating children from their families at the
border,” his email reads. “Our current cloud engagement with U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supporting legacy mail,
calendar, messaging and document management workloads.” |
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