Guerilla journalist James O’Keefe has exposed IBM CEO Arvind Krishna telling his staff their bonus will be threatened, or worse if they don’t meet diversity hire expectations. The leaked video recording from 2021 reveals Krishna meeting with representatives from IBM subsidiary company Red Hat. Krishna pulled advertising from Elon Musk’s Twitter (“X”) this month, citing “racism” concerns — but then told his employees to judge potential hires by what they look like over their merit. In a video call, Krishna said people might be fired or lose out on their bonuses if they do not discriminate according to skin colour in the hiring process, clarifying that the tech sector has enough Asians but needs more Hispanics and black people. “You got to move both forward on Hispanic hires by a percentage that leads to a plus on your bonus," Krishna said, “and by the way if you lose, you lose part of your bonus.”“I’m not going to finesse this, for blacks we should try to get towards 13%,” Krishna continued, adding, "Asians are not an underrepresented minority in tech in America,” so no need to focus on hiring people from this group. Chairman of Red Hat Paul Cormier confirmed in the video call that the IBM offshoot company has fired employees who refused to participate in racial discrimination in the workplace.“Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race in the workplace,” O’Keefe wrote alongside the video in a Twitter ("X") post.
