Corporate Criticism of Trump's Travel Ban Moves Beyond Tech -- Update
January 30 2017 - 8:14PM
Dow Jones News
A Wall Street Journal Roundup
Criticism of President Donald Trump's immigration order moved
beyond Silicon Valley on Monday, with the heads of business giants
including Ford Motor Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. weighing in on travel restrictions that have sown havoc at
airports and sparked protests world-wide.
Ford Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Fields condemned the
rules restricting travel from seven Muslim-majority countries,
describing the policy in a statement to employees as going against
the company's values.
"Respect for all people is a core value of Ford Motor Company,
and we are proud of the rich diversity of our company here at home
and around the world," the statement says. "That is why we do not
support this policy."
The statement marks a change in tone among Ford's top leadership
toward the new administration. In recent weeks, Ford and Mr. Fields
have praised Mr. Trump for pursuing policies beneficial to business
and the broader economy.
Coke's Turkish-American chief executive, Muhtar Kent, also
joined the ranks of chief executives to speak out Monday, saying in
an emailed statement that the soda giant "is resolute in its
commitment to diversity, fairness and inclusion, and we do not
support this travel ban or any policy that is contrary to our core
values and beliefs." The Atlanta-based company is still assessing
the ban's impact on its employees, he added.
Goldman Sachs's more than 34,000 employees arrived at work
Monday to find a voice mail from CEO Lloyd Blankfein denouncing the
immigration ban. "This is not a policy we support," he said. "Being
diverse is not optional; it is what we must be."
The White House defended the rules on Monday, with Mr. Trump
blaming a Delta Air Line Inc. computer outage and protesters for
travel disruptions.
Monday's rebukes from executives follow sharp criticism from the
technology industry over the weekend, which ended weeks of cautious
engagement with the new president. Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Apple
Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., Uber Technologies Inc. and
other companies expressed concern about the immigration order's
effect on their employees, with some executives saying the ban
violated their personal and company principles.
Google said more than 2,000 of its employees across eight U.S.
offices gathered Monday to protest the order. A large crowd with
anti-Trump and pro-immigration signs gathered at the company's
headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., where Google co-founder
Sergey Brin and Chief Executive Sundar Pichai spoke out against the
policy, according to the company and photos posted to social
media.
Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos on Monday weighed in with one of
the strongest signs of corporate disapproval of the order, saying
the e-commerce giant was working with lawmakers and state officials
to explore legal options to counter Mr. Trump's move.
"To our employees in the U.S. and around the world who may be
directly affected by this order, I want you to know that the full
extent of Amazon's resources are behind you," Mr. Bezos wrote in an
email to staff on Monday.
Some companies already are facing possible backlash to their
stances against the immigration order.
Starbucks Corp. was facing threats of a boycott on Monday from
some customers after Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz promised to
hire 10,000 refugees globally over the next five years in response
to Mr. Trump's order.
On Monday afternoon, the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks was the
highest trending topic on Twitter, with the number of tweets
exceeding those about the Holocaust, following Holocaust
Remembrance Day last week. Some customers said they took offense to
the idea of jobs going to people who are not American citizens.
Greek yogurt brand Chobani Inc. employs about 300 refugees from
Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East at its factories in
upstate New York and Idaho. Founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, who
immigrated from Turkey in 1994, has been hiring refugees since
2010, and has received both criticism and praise for effort. "The
65 million people around the world who are displaced because of
violence is not a political crisis, it's a humanitarian crisis,"
Mr. Ulukaya said in a letter to his employees following Mr. Trump's
ban. If any of Chobani's employees or their families are affected
by the action, "we'll have their backs every day," the letter
said.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 30, 2017 19:59 ET (00:59 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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