Accenture workers join tech protests of contracts with U.S. border enforcement
Accenture staff are circulating letter urging company leadership to end its contract with U.S. border enforcement, following reports earlier this year of harsh treatment of detained families at the U.S.-Mexican border.
{mosads}“The technology we provide is sold in the name of efficiency, but all we see is technology supercharging inhumane and cruel policies,” the employees wrote in their letter, obtained by The Hill and first reported by Bloomberg. “We cannot support CBP while it is engaged in these immoral and illegal activities. Our work directly strengthens CBP’s capacity to execute these policies.”
Accenture spokeswoman Stacey Jones told The Hill that “We welcome the feedback from our people and are aware of the posting on our internal blog site. An important part of our culture is that we encourage all our people to have a dialogue about issues that arise in the workplace and beyond.”
In the summer, fellow management consulting firm McKinsey cut its ties with ICE following pressure from employees.
In the technology industry, workers at a number of firms including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Salesforce have urged their executives to stop doing business with border enforcement, local law enforcement and the Pentagon.
Google has capitulated to several demands from its workers, including a call for it to stop providing A.I. service assisting military drone use and it stopped pursuing a multi-billion dollar cloud computing contract with the DOD.
Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce have been less compliant with employee demands, saying that they don’t want to stop engaging with the government.
This story was updated at 9:30 p.m.See the Accenture letter in full below:
Accenture Letter 2 by Ali Breland on Scribd
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