It was IBM’s black workers who first fought to change this. The year I joined IBM, 1970, was also the year the National Black Workers Alliance of IBM (BWA) was born, the first-ever movement of hi-tech minority workers. IBM’s retaliation against BWA was swift and brutal, especially after the alliance obtained company documents revealing a systemic pattern of discrimination against black employees. What the black workers of BWA sought in the 1970s has not come to pass – harassment and discrimination of many kinds is still rife within tech companies. Three of the fired Google workers identify as LGBT, and had been organizing their colleagues to demand that Google provide the same benefits for same-sex partnerships that they provide to other couples.

Source: The Guardian December 06, 2019 10:52 UTC