Supplier diversity initiatives now starting to grow into invisible PC-barriers for traditionally minded firms.
By Martha Kleder, MBA
Any business wishing to be considered by the London Development Agency for a contract to participate in revitalization efforts in the city must answer an extensive questionnaire about its workforce, including how many staff members are transgendered.
This form is given to businesses of all sizes to report the breakdown of their staff along racial, ethnic, gender, perceived gender and disability status. Officials with the agency have said that the questionnaire is merely a tool to help them develop diversity among its supplier base.
That may not be the case for long, however, if British government agencies follow the path of the private sector. In March it was reported that Microsoft UK, the British arm of the software giant, terminated its business with one supplier because of the firm’s “cavalier” approach to diversity. So goes the newest tool of homosexual activists in their efforts to force the acceptance and approval of their behavior on the corporate world. “While the pro-family movement focused on doing battle against the homosexual lobby in Washington, D.C., and state capitals, ‘gay’ activists won over corporations, largely through internal activism within each company,” notes Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth.
Although the transgender question breaks new ground, the trend of supplier diversity initiatives being used to promote diversity in companies with which larger firms do business originated in the United States back in the 1980s. Originally intended as a helping hand to small businesses run by women, racial minorities, military veterans and the disabled, supplier diversity initiatives are now starting to grow into invisible PC-barriers for traditionally minded firms.
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/14663/CFI/freedom/index.htm