America has faced a racial reckoning following the police killing of George Floyd, and corporate America hasn’t been immune.
In late spring, while protests popped up across the country and companies pledged their support of the Black Lives Matter movement, many workers took to social media to call out their employers for “performative allyship,” irked that public statements of support didn’t always match their internal norms or commitment to diversity and equality.
It’s not an entirely new phenomenon. There’s been a recent increase in this kind of employee activism following the visibility of the #MeToo movement, says Aaron Goldstein, a labor attorney at international law firm Dorsey & Whitney.
“Over the last five years, employees and former employees have increasingly turned to social media to publicize allegations of toxic, abusive, or discriminatory workplace environments, and to organize public campaigns to address them,” Goldstein says. “Social media has created a feedback loop where allegations are easily published and shared, which leads to greater public concern, which makes more people willing to come forward with yet more allegations.”
