America First Legal, which has been led by incoming Trump administration deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, is claiming victory against American Airlines. The organization says American has agreed to “end illegal DEI practices.”
That is not, however, what the material that American First Legal presents says.
- There’s no admission or even suggestion that American was engaging in illegal discrimination in pursuit of diversity hiring goals.
- And there’s no suggestion that American Airlines will change any practices at all.
- Instead, the Department of Labor simply asserts that American Airlines is aware of its obligations under the law as a federal contractor, and will follow the law (natch).
/1 ✈️ BREAKING: American Airlines to end illegal DEI employment practices
The U.S. Department of Labor has confirmed that American Airlines will end race and sex-based discrimination in hiring and promotions following AFL’s federal civil rights complaint. pic.twitter.com/xSJBldct8n
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) December 17, 2024
America First Legal says they’ve come to similar understandings with United and Southwest, also, and that all three carriers will ‘end illegal discrimination’ against White People. Except in none of these cases do any of the airlines or the Department of Labor say that anything illegal was happening, or that any specific practices will change. Instead, they all simply say that the airlines all indicate they will follow the law (and, I am confident, they all assert that they have been doing so to date as well).
/7 Together, United, Southwest, and American control approximately 50 percent of the airline market, and their commitment to ending illegal race and sex-based discrimination across employment practices is a significant step toward restoring fairness in the industry.
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) December 17, 2024
There is nothing illegal, or inappropriate, about:
- Seeking to identify talent in non-traditional places. That’s just a good Moneyball strategy. The market is pretty efficient for traditional pilot and MBA pipelines, paying candidates at the value of their marginal product for the most part. Companies win when they identify overlooked talent. And that’s especially important when talent is scarce.
- Using benchmarks as a tool to raise questions about the fairness of your process, or whether it is a helpful process to attract the best possible talent. You want to know if you’re unfriendly or unwelcoming, or if minor adjustments could make you an attractive place for talent you’re missing. Note, often unsaid in all of this, and a bit uncomfortable for DEI advocates is that this approach helps companies hire talent for less money.
To be sure, there may be informal enforcement of quotas at some airlines, in some departments, and for some roles. I am aware of an executive promoted to the vice president level at an airline where their primary qualification was viewed as their race (and in fact, the airline believed this benefited their business interest). However, nothing presented in the record in these complaints obviously demonstrate illegal quotas.
Many non-profits do good work, but many are also grifts. Sometimes it can be tough to sort out which is which. There’s a strong incentive to overstate successes, in order to appear even more effective than they are, to make the strongest case possible for funding. Donors know that organizations do this, and so they account for it in their own thinking.
- A group that might rate 7 out of 10 on effectiveness presents itself as 10 out of 10
- Knowing this, donors discount all presentations by 3
- So a group that was earnest, and presented as a 7 would get penalized – they’d be assumed to be blowing smoke and really a 4.
In a sense, non-profit exaggeration – as appears to be happening in this case – becomes like resort fees. Everyone knows they’re wrong, but a hotel trying to do the right thing with honest and transparent pricing would look more expensive than the bad actor as a result of dropping resort fees. So they keep the fees in place, in order to avoid putting themselves at a disadvantage.
My unpopular but related take on Al Qaeda was that there weren’t actually a large number of people willing to die to harm the United States. All cause-oriented groups, they eventually need to show some amount of success to please their donors and keep funds flowing. Most members just liked being attached to the cause, and most of the 9/11 hijackers didn’t actually know they were on a suicide mission. That’s a big part of why we didn’t see other, similar attempts afterward.
Ultimately discrimination law was intended to protect traditionally marginalized groups from harm. But those same laws forbid outright discrimination against anyone that’s a government contractor. So over the summer America First Legal sued Expedia for refusing to hire a white male executive.
In the travel space, this effort isn’t just about airlines. And these legal efforts aside, there does seem to broadly be a big cultural shift compared to the latter years of the previous decade. Traditionally, discrimination rules have been enforced only when the actions harm members of a protected class. There’s an effort here to apply them more broadly.
An interesting takeaway, though, is that corporations used to be bogeymen of the left and in recent years have actually been at the vanguard of social change. There’s been a real crackup in traditional alliances, which makes so many predictions about how politicians will act and coalitions form difficult for many to predict going forward.
Are we ‘great again’ yet?
Hire people that are the most qualified. It’s that simple. And to be blunt and sadly minority groups today AND POOR WHITE COMMUNITIES have little value for education and success. The result of father less homes and mothers that do not have the financial and emotional ability to successfully raise children.
So true, George! When can a poor, white, heterosexual, Christian, Trump-supporting man catch a break?! Don’t worry though, tax cuts and mass-deportations of the ‘untouchables’ are on the way. Praise be!
End this quota crap. Not Hermes quota bag
If your work force has been historically predominantly white, and you change your practices so that your work force ends up more diversified, that doesn’t mean you’re hiring unqualified minorities, it just means you had always been hiring less qualified white people.
What a GOP Bunch of bull. Whites have had it better for 250 years. Bring to an even the playing field is important to the country. Tell Miller to jump of a building
I wish airlines would hire without even *asking* for gender or race from applicants….
The truth doesn’t matter to this group, it is all about claiming victory and making them look like they accomplished something..
Guess George never met any of the immigrants who work like crazy to make it here. Of course in most of the world people would point at him and say “minority”.
I’m going as Miller for Halloween. That guy is scary and he Didn’t Earn It himself. He’s contributed nothing but hate to society.
There are those of us supporting hiring based on merit and, importantly, “playing Moneyball.” So, orchestras have blind auditions where applicants age, gender, race, etc. can’t be known. But, then you get Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times who called for an end to the practice. “If ensembles are to reflect the communities they serve,” he wrote, “the audition process should take into account race, gender and other factors.” So, there’s the DEI hypocrisy: race/gender/etc. should make no difference unless we don’t like the results.
“Nothing so epitomizes the politically correct gullibility of our times as the magic word ‘diversity.’ The wonders of diversity are proclaimed from the media, extolled in the academy and confirmed in the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States. But have you ever seen one speck of hard evidence to support the lofty claims?” Thomas Sowell
“Minority groups . . . have little value . . . “. That’s right. There’s not a single minority person with merit. There’s not a single minority person who is worthy.
The Tuskegee Airmen who provided fighter escort in WWII lost not a single bomber under its protection.
The Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team of WWIi remains the most decorated Army unit in history, including the most Medals of Honor.
And, yet, there are some assholes who will still call them niggers and slopes.
From the Kamala-Aligned View From The Wing.
Either deliberately or because of poor logic, most efforts in the areas of diversity and charity focus on fudging the end result – forcing employers to hire bad staff, or supplementing overpopulated communities by sending food. Longterm this is counterproductive, the starving overpopulation continues to expand, and the undercapable forced-hires make employers even warier of minorities.
The place to act is at the source – – send contraceptives not food, focus on education not bad employees
Gary, this was one of the best reasoned blog on this topic. As someone who started work in the 1980s, I started at a large company who had been found guilty of racial discrimination. There was substantial sexual discrimination at the company as well, but that wasn’t what it was convicted of. The company took seriously it’s need to improve practices.
One example is that the company started recruiting for engineers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). How would you know you were hiring the best and the brightest, if there were certain places you never looked.
In addition to hiring practices, employee retention was worked on. It doesn’t do any good to hire the best and brightest at a HBCU only to have them leave because they experienced racial, ethnic, or sexual harassment. We employees need to learn what it was like for someone different to come into white-male dominated environment. The first year I worked there, a good female engineer left because of one person’s putting down of her work.
Mistakes were made, such as promoting someone two years out of college into a managerial role. That wasn’t enough time to learn how teams worked at the company, nor to have gone through grooming of skills like budgeting that manager needs. She also left not too long after that promotion, but I can’t say whether that was inadequate preparation for the role, or better opportunities outside, or difficulty of her team taking the lead from a young black woman. Still, I understand that it’s difficult to go from few diverse managers to representative numbers once entry level representation has taken a considerable jump.
Many younger people didn’t live through the 70s and 80s in the workforce, and the need for anti-discrimination laws, and changes in society. Much of fight against DEI initiatives see it as wrong if someone is challenged to find a well qualified person of color as part of a talent search. That doesn’t mean they get the job, but they at least get to present their case. This is also where Biden got it wrong. He should have asked for a diverse pool of people for Vice President and Supreme Court Justice, and picked the best. One part of being the best could be being able to represent all of the country, and the results could have been the same, but he excluded a large part of the pool of well qualified candidates away, and demonstrated how not to do DEI hiring.
@Lee…Great example of the straw man argument.
@Lee Gee Golly Gosh! Referring to it as the ‘n-word’ would have sufficed. Ya didn’t have to go full-on hard-R. *sigh*
Woo hoo! SCREW DEI! It’s racist, socialist and has no place in a true democracy where merit and intelligence should reign supreme! I am so glad Weekend at Bernie’s Biden is gone! And I would never vote for someone like Harris. Trash people those dems. So glad we have a Rep sweep. Kill woke. Kill DEI.
The owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers wanted to increase revenues. Attracting cash-paying black fans would do so. Adding a black player would do so and, thus, increase revenues. Which was his business objective. So, he hired Jackie Robinson. And, the Giants hired Willie Mays.
Was the owner of the Dodgers or the Giants racists? Or, just trying to expand their revenuez?
When you drive a Tesla you make a stand against DEI
Thank you, President Trump for making America great again!! We love you, and we are so glad you are going back to the White House!!
Nick said “When you drive a Tesla you make a stand against DEI”
No.
It means that I got a combination of incentives in my blue state of Colorado that knocked $30k off the MSRP of my 2024 Tesla MYP.
Gary,
You can say what you want about a consent agreement, the proof is in who will be enforcing it.
In this case, Trump just announced that the Sikh-American Harmeet Dhillon will be heading up the Civil Rights portfolio in the Justice Department and she has taken a very dim view of race quotas in the past — having won several cases on the subject while representing white males.
Merit is going to be enforced, thankfully, and in accordance with Supreme Court case law and woe unto all DEI practices that establish race preferences at Federal Contractors, Federal Agencies and/or Universities that receive Federal funding.
It’s about time and Miller has something to crow about as he will be setting policy in the new Trump administration e.g. race neutral, merit based — as it should be.
Adam said: “Woo hoo! SCREW DEI! It’s racist, socialist and has no place in a true democracy..”
It’s really annoying that people are ignorant of what words mean.
First, we’re not a democracy; definately NOWHERE even CLOSE to a “true democracy”.
On paper, we’re a Democratic Republic. Don’t even pretend that ‘one person one vote” exists here. If you disagree, take it up with the Electoral College.
And furthermore, since the Supreme Court has ruled in Citizens United that $$$ = political voice, we are not even a Democratic Rpublic at this time, we are transitioning into an Oligarchy.
Look at the billionaires being given positions in the upcoming administration. Those appointments are repaying their massive political donations quid pro quo. Your one vote now means less than bupkis unless you drop $250M in a SuperPAC.
Nexr, “Socialism” isn’t DEI.
Socialism is that “the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
While that sounds a lot like the stock market — because I learned a long time ago that if I want to “sieze the means of production” to do that would be through building wealth in the stock market and voting as a shareholder — .that doesn’t mean changing old behaviors of only hiring white men is socialism? It’s just good business to expand your customer base and increase quarterly profits.
What your ignorant brain attempted to communicate is that DEI is modifying behavior through Social Change. An attempt to change bad behavior to better.
Just like Church, or Religion. Or God.
Consider that the next time you are sitting in the house of worship of your choice. The home of DEI.
Gary, you are missing one key fact in all this:
The DOL has no authority to call for an “informal compliance conference” as referenced in the letter UNLESS, after investigation, DOL determines that some evidence exists to substantiate the complaint. This fact can be verified by checking the section of CFR cited in the DOL’s letter. If it were otherwise, the DOL would be legally required to dismiss the complaint (not arrange and hold an informal conference.).
You’re right that the letter resulting from the compliance conference contains no admissions of wrongdoing (no corporate Respondent is going to settle at the “informal conference” stage of proceedings for anything more than this, for fairly obvious legal reasons), but you’re wrong to imply that the US Dept. of Labor goes around holding these sorts of conferences when it has zero evidence to support a violation.
Some investigation was done by the DOL pursuant to the complaint, and it was determined that the complaint had enough “teeth” to not be dismissed as being legally insufficient.
Keep in mind that the Biden admin’s own DOL made this determination, too.
I think this post suffers from Gary not being a lawyer who’s faced down federal investigations.
As the Twitter thread points out, by DOL regulation, potential violations (sure, not proven ones) are first handled through informal means. And AA was indeed called in for an “informal compliance conference” in response to the America First complaint. Gary just leaves those details out of the post entirely to make his argument seem stronger. As a lawyer who’s dealt wit ha range of federal investigations, I can tell you that no company wants to be dragged in for any kind of “compliance conference” with any federal agency — the fact that it is “informal” is often only because formal federal regulatory enforcement is cumbersome and can be rare; an informally settled issue can be very serious indeed. (In an area I know much less about but Gary might, I suspect no airline would want an “informal compliance conference” with, say, the FAA either. Easily survivable but certainly the kind of thing you call in specialized outside counsel and spend a boatload of money preparing for.)
When was the last time American Airlines hired a straight white guy as a gate agent or flight attendant? I submit they practice reverse discrimination because the whole company has been infiltrated personnel who only support their type and bias to the exclusion of any assessment of qualification.
@Lee honest people don’t creatively select fragments of a quote to make it seem the speaker said something else. You are dishonest. But, I guess that’s OK today.
@Zebra “An attempt to change bad behavior to better.
Just like Church, or Religion. Or God.
Consider that the next time you are sitting in the house of worship of your choice. The home of DEI.”
Good intentions do not justify bad tactics and results. And, religions have regularly been racist, exist, homophobic, etc. Think about that when your sitting on the toilet.
☆ sexist [probably should have sais misogynistic anway
I don’t see that anything has changed within American. They are still promoting women and blacks regardless of them being the best candidate. And still promoting the LGBT agenda: https://news.aa.com/news/news-details/2019/Tell-Me-Why-Supporting-team-members-in-being-their-authentic-self/default.aspx
Just had a tranny flight attendant who was coughing on my AA flight from BNA. Looked like a deranged cracked out carnival side show best reserved for skid row in LA. Sad thing is, DEI will remain alive and well as AA can’t fire this person, their FA union will scream bloody murder. .