Leaders from several large US companies, including tech giants and banks, have come together to form a group whose primary aim is to increase the hiring of individuals belonging to minority communities in New York.
The New York Jobs CEO Council, which consists of the chiefs of 27 firms, aims to provide employment to 100,000 individuals from low-income Asian, Latino and Black communities by the year 2030.
US Companies Under Pressure
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet will co-chair the group. Other companies in the group include Amazon.com Inc, Google, Microsoft Corp and Goldman Sachs, according to a press statement.
US companies have been under increasing pressure to do more to provide minority groups with access to opportunities in the wake of anti-racism protests sparked by the death of a 46-year-old African-American man, George Floyd. Floyd died in May after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Low-income and Minority Communities
The protests also came as minorities were disproportionately represented in coronavirus deaths, and lower-income communities in the United States were hit hard economically. "Today's economic crisis is exacerbating economic and racial divides and exposing systemic barriers to opportunity", Dimon said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, adding that often high-achieving people across New York were not given opportunities at the city's top employers.
"Young people in low-income and minority communities feel this failure the most. Unless we actively work to close the gap, COVID-19 will make matters worse," said the opinion piece which was co-authored with Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, the chancellor of the City University of New York.
(With inputs from agencies)
