Leadership from major U.S. companies have come together to form a group which aims at increased recruitment of individuals from minority communities in New York.
The New York Jobs CEO Council, which intends to hire 100,000 people from low-income Black, Latino and Asian communities by 2030, includes representations from banks and tech giants has chief executives from 27 firms among its members.
JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon, IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet will co-chair the group.
Amazon.com Inc, Google, Microsoft Corp and Goldman Sachs also have representations in the group.
U.S. companies have been under severe criticism for not doing enough for the minority groups to enable them 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.
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.
