Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess (not shown) participated in a session during his visit to the Volkswagen Digital Lab in Berlin on February 27, 2019.
Abdulhamid Hosbas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Microsoft said on Friday that its political action committee will not contribute to upcoming campaigns for members of the US Congress who voted against confirming the results of the Electoral College for the 2020 presidential election. It will also change the name of its election committee. support for political campaigns after officials spoke out against some contributions.
The adjustments demonstrate how large technology companies are sometimes willing to change their practices after criticism from their own workers.
The Microsoft Political Action Committee, known as MSPAC, will become the Microsoft Corporation Voluntary Stakeholder PAC, or MSVPAC. Fred Humphries, corporate vice president for US government affairs, explained the change in an email posted on a Microsoft blog.
The changes come after Microsoft employee Carmen Crincoli published an appeal for the company to stop giving money to politicians who voted against the results of the Electoral College. Those votes came after thousands of angry citizens invaded the U.S. Capitol after then President Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he blamed the widespread fraud of his electoral defeat. Attorney General William Barr said in December that the Justice Department had not seen enough fraud that it could have caused a different outcome in the presidential election.
Microsoft held sessions with officials to hear their views on MSPAC after reports that the committee had sent financial support to campaigns for members of Congress who pledged to oppose the results of the Electoral College.
The decision to suspend disbursements for these people in the 2022 cycle is not a complete surprise. On January 23, Microsoft said it suspended all donations while considering whether to suspend them for candidates who voted against certifying the results.
Humphries also said that Microsoft will present a program to support efforts to increase transparency in policy.
“We heard from some members of the PAC community who do not want to contribute to political candidates, but would like to donate for work that will address issues and policies that are important for the preservation and promotion of democracy,” he wrote. “To address this, we will create a new Next Democracy Initiative to support organizations that promote public transparency, campaign financing reform and voting rights. We will have more details to share in the coming weeks about creating this fund and how employees can contribute to that. “
On rare occasions, major technology companies have changed their behavior in response to pressure from employees.
In 2018, Google said it would not renew a cloud contract with the U.S. Department of Defense after thousands of employees signed a petition for the company to end its involvement.
But it doesn’t always happen.
In 2018, expressing concern that U.S. customs and patrol officials separated the children from their parents, Salesforce employees signed a petition to terminate the contract with the agency. But CEO Marc Benioff finally argued that the contract did not involve family separation.
And in 2020, Microsoft’s GitHub unit employees signed a petition for GitHub to end its contract with the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs, but GitHub did not announce a change in its relationship with the government agency.
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