Barbara Lee calls on Apple, tech holdouts to release diversity data

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., called on holdouts among the nation's technology companies to release federal data on the diversity of their work forces.

Lee was in Silicon Valley this week with two other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to turn up the heat on the tech industry to hire more African Americans.

"We have asked them all to release the data," Lee said in an interview on Tuesday.

Asked about major tech companies that have not yet released the information such as Apple, Lee said: "If they believe in inclusion, they have to release the data so the public knows that they are being transparent and that they are committed to doing the right thing."

Major technology companies such as Facebook and Google release their federal diversity data along with pie charts that illustrate the demographics of their workforces and recently did so for the second straight year. Intel has been releasing its federal diversity data to the public for years.

Amazon.com, which did not respond to requests from USA TODAY to release its diversity data in December, has now released the data, said company spokesman Ty Rogers.

Apple, one of technology's most powerful companies, has refused to make public that data that it routinely supplies to the U.S. Department of Labor on the demographics of their workers.

In December Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet declined to comment on why Apple would not release the data.

Huguet did not respond to requests for comment on Apple's federal diversity data.

Apple's global human resources chief Denise Young Smith pledged last month that Apple's upcoming diversity report would have "more transparency" than last year and would show an increase in hiring of women, African-Americans and Latinos.

"We did have some movement in our hiring or women and hiring of minorities," Young Smith said during the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in July.

Black lawmakers met on Monday with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Joining Lee was the caucus' chairman G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. The three also met with executives from Intel, Google, Pandora and SAP to discuss how to improve the troubling hiring record of tech companies.

"Apple seems to be moving in the right direction. Tim Cook wants his company to look like the country and I think they are very committed to doing everything they can do," Lee said.

For years, technology companies fought sharing any demographic information about their employees, claiming the information was a trade secret. Only in the past year or so have the industry's top companies opened up about the lack of diversity in their ranks.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson is urging all companies including high-profile start-ups such as Uber, Square, Dropbox, Airbnb and Spotify to release the federal diversity data, saying the tech industry must usher in a new era of transparency.

"Last year, Rainbow PUSH challenged over 25 tech companies to release their workforce diversity data. The data showed an abysmal record where Blacks and Latinos typically comprised just 2% of the overall workforce," Jackson said.

American companies collect and report information about their work forces to the federal government each year in a form called the EEO-1.

The EEO-1 is a standard form that breaks down race, ethnicity and gender of work forces by job classification.

EBay, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Twitter are among the major technology companies that have made public their EEO-1s.

But other companies chose instead to provide less detailed broad strokes information such as the percentage of tech workers or company managers who are women or minorities. Chief among those companies is Apple.

Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn on Twitter: @jguynn