But RAICES has decided to reject the offer and has set about that rejection in the most public manner possible, with Executive Director Jonathan Ryan stating in an email: After careful consideration by our staff, we have decided to decline this gift unless Salesforce commits to cancel all direct or indirect contracts with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as principled Salesforce employees have demanded. Salesforce signs contract with CBP On March 6, 2018, the tech giant announced that CBP would be “deploying Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and … There is no way around this, and there is no room for hair splitting when children are being brutally torn away from parents, when a mother attempts suicide in an effort to get her children released, and when an 18 month old baby is separated from their mother in detention. The activists were demanding to know why Benioff continued to maintain Salesforce’s controversial relationship with the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP). I said previously that Benioff should, in many ways, take satisfaction from the fact that he's created a culture in which his employees feel empowered enough to engage with their CEO on controversial issues like the CBP deal. CBP will use Community Cloud and Analytics to recruit and support new agents in the field and Service Cloud to drive efficiencies around U.S. border activities Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—the largest federal law enforcement agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—is deploying Salesforce Analytics, … But that is not enough. Nadella subsequently made sure that his opposition to the events on the border was clear and emphasized that Microsoft didn’t know of any use of its tech by ICE to break up families. The story so far - CBP has been on the forefront of enforcing President Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to unauthorized immigrants on the Mexico border, a policy that resulted in the forcible separation of young children from their parents. For his part, Benioff emphasized that Salesforce’s deal with CBP does not involve working with border staff in any activities involving the separation of families: The US Customs and Border Protection contract with Salesforce is for its recruiting efforts and correspondence with US citizens and lawmakers. That’s highly emotive language, but then this is a highly emotive topic. We will not be a beneficiary of your effort to buy your way out of ethical responsibility. A sentence in the book reads: “Companies, and the people who lead them, can no longer afford to separate business objectives from the social issues surrounding them. The, Salesforce has fostered a reputation as a good corporate citizen, having, One strong possibility is money. There is no way around this, and there is no room for hair splitting when children are being brutally torn away from parents, when a mother attempts suicide in an effort to get her children released, and when an eighteen-month-old baby is separated from their mother in detention.”, Salesforce’s employees and customers speak up. Contract Duration: 24 months Total Contract Value: $4,677,490.84 Funding Agency: U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION Number of Bidders: 1 Award ID: 70B04C20F00001469. A dozen or so people accompanied by a 14-foot, 800-pound cage gathered in downtown San Francisco Tuesday morning to protest Salesforce’s contract with U.S. Customs and … In April of 2019, following an employee petition, Google announced that it would not renew its contract with a Department of Defense drone surveillance project upon its expiration. (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication. Created under Creative Commons License, some rights reserved. While ICE has received the lion’s share of the criticism for the manner in which it has been carrying out the Trump Administration’s heavy-handed policies regarding undocumented immigrants, CBP, whose task is the protection of US borders, has also come under fire for its activities. In 2019, Benioff and his wife donated $30 million to the University of California at San Francisco to study homelessness, and in 2015, he threatened to reduce Salesforce’s business in Indiana to protest that state’s anti-LBGTQ law. In August, Amazon pitched its facial recognition to ICE, prompting a backlash from human rights advocates, while IBM employees have been protesting the company’s relationship with ICE and CBP, which has earned it $1.7 billion since 2008. “We are absolutely appalled that Salesforce is providing assistance to government agencies that are violating human rights and is refusing to drop the contract with Customs and Border Protection,” they wrote. As members of the Salesforce Ohana, we believe that Salesforce must stand with the families facing irrevocable and unimaginable harm at the hands of CBP. “Unless and until Benioff ends his contract with CBP, his claims at altruism will be nothing more than a fraud.”. Prior to this policy being enforced, Salesforce announced that it had won a contract with CBP to use Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and Service Cloud to “modernize its recruiting process, from hire to retire, and manage border activities and digital engagement with citizens”. Many of Salesforce’s employees seem to agree. They have also scheduled a press conference outside Salesforce’s offices in downtown San Francisco for December 19th at noon to call more attention to the issue. Benioff also pledged a million dollars to support agencies and organizations working with immigrants. We will not be quiet until you do. Beyond that, nurture and support and enable change wherever possible. I know you’re going to make it great. Last year, after Salesforce employees had joined a petition opposing the company's contract with CBP, Benioff spent time away considering about how best to … “Agents were caught making racist comments in a Facebook group—a group that the chief of the Border Patrol evidently was a member of herself,” wrote journalist Garrett Graff. Benioff allowed one of the protestors to speak for thirty seconds, before the young man was ushered away. On Tuesday, the company told RAICES that it would not cancel the contract but understood the group’s position. CBP has also been described as rife with corruption. “… as long as Salesforce keeps its contracts with Customs and Border Protection, they are still enabling the agency to violate human rights. Shockingly, between July, 2017 and June, 2018, 207 children younger than the age of five were taken from their parents. Salesforce is not the only US tech company that has faced a backlash for its relationships with organizations that engage in morally questionable practices. Disclosure - At time of writing Salesforce is a premier partner of diginomica. More than 650 Salesforce employees have signed a petition asking their employer to end a contract with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But this ignores the many excesses that the agency has committed. “Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should reexamine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices.". We are not working with CBP regarding the separation of families at the border, nor are any Salesforce services being used by CBP for this purpose. This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member. One consequence of taking highly-public ethical stands in the emerging age of the Citizen CEO is that there will always be those who demand more and who flag up what they perceive to be hypocrisy or double standards. The same should apply to customers. Noting that all the signatories benefit from using Salesforce’s tech, the letter goes on to state: However, we are absolutely appalled that Salesforce is providing assistance to government agencies that are violating human rights. Benioff has thus far resisted all calls to end Salesforce’s contract with CBP, but this has not deterred activists. “We are particularly concerned about the use of Service Cloud to manage border activities,” the letter read. Voters decided: Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States! The Guardian, that at least 97 people have been shot and killed by CBP since 2003. “Salesforce claims social responsibility as a core value while making tens of millions of dollars in contracts with an agency that is profiting from the deaths of migrants doing nothing more than seeking a better life,” he said. One of these was RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services), a Texas-based non-profit, which was offered a $250,000 donation to support its work in providing legal services in immigration cases. While you justified continuing your contract with CBP by claiming that Salesforce software “isn’t working with CBP regarding the separation of families at the border”, this is not enough. It campaigned in favor of a proposition that would force it to pay a tax benefiting the homeless in San Francisco. Tell Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to cancel the contract with Customs and Border Patrol. A physician who toured two CBP-run detention facilities described them as “torture facilities.” Others, citing the appallingly inhumane conditions of the centers, have called them concentration camps. They can no longer view their mission as a set of binary choices: growing vs. giving back, making a profit vs. promoting the public good, or innovating vs. making the world a better place.”. After receiving the workers’ petition, he praised his employees’ concern but chose to side with CBP rather than with the families being torn apart at the border. This means that any authorized user on any operating system can directly access and update contract data in real time. November 21, 2018 James Cullum. In an internal memo, he wrote that Salesforce would not terminate its contract with CBP, because Salesforce products were “not directly involved” in family separations… We need look no further than the flack that Salesforce has picked up this week in relation to its contract with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both from customers and yesterday from a legal services group supporting immigrants, which has turned down a $250,000 donation from the firm in a very attention-grabbing manner. It’s not just Salesforce that’s caught in the crossfire here. Since July of 2017, CPB agents have separated roughly 5,400 migrant children from their families. The Salesforce founder and co-CEO ultimately decided his company would keep its contract with the CBP — claiming that his company's software was not used to separate families — though he "wrestled" with the judgment call for most of the last summer, according to a CNBC interview with Benioff. In April of 2019, following an employee petition, Google, Benioff has thus far resisted all calls to end Salesforce’s contract with CBP, but this has not deterred activists. As Salesforce customers, we urge you to cut your contract with Customs and Border Protection. You’re shaping this future. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is defending his company’s decision to sell software to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Steampunk and Salesforce were recently named to the updated list of NXT UP firms poised to make big waves in the Federal sector in 2020 and for years to come. Many of its nefarious activities have come to light recently, as the agency has been beset by scandal after scandal. The US Customs and Border Protection contract with Salesforce is for its recruiting efforts and correspondence with US citizens and lawmakers. “It’s because I value free speech in this country. Salesforce employees are the latest to push back against their employer’s contracts with US government agencies. We cannot, in good conscience, ignore this issue. We appreciate that and the donation they have pledged to make to affected families. Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff has a net worth of $6.2Band likes to present himself as a philanthropist. Even if the company’s services are not used directly in the mistreatment of people—unlike, perhaps, Hewlett Packard’s, whose technology is employed in various ways by the Israeli Defence Forces to subjugate the Palestinians—Salesforce should nevertheless be seen as culpable in the commission of CBP’s crimes. The technology company Salesforce is facing mounting pressure to cancel its contract with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with protests targeting its CEO, Marc Benioff, on Tuesday. Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should reexamine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices. This argument is disingenuous at best. Three months after the contract with CBP was announced, 650 employees penned a, In July of 2018, thirty-two companies who are customers or prospective customers of Salesforce made similar. ), On November 19, 2019, Salesforce co-CEO Mark Benioff was, “I want to tell you why I stopped the program and let him speak for 30 seconds,” Benioff, deploying Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and Service Cloud to modernize its recruiting process, from hire to retire, and manage border activities and digital engagement with citizens.”, The appalling treatment of migrants at the US-Mexico border in recent years has been well-documented. Salesforce has been here before. The messages urged concert-goers to contact Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff about the company’s multimillion-dollar contract with U.S. Border Patrol, which Fight For the Future opposes. The software and technical services you provide to CBP form part of the foundation that helps ICE operate efficiently, from recruiting more officers to managing vendors. Given some of the negative coverage this week, it might not feel like that right now, but it seems to me that this is the sort of wider activism that Benioff encouraged at Dreamforce last year when he told his audience: It’s about the equality of every human being. If every tech company that has any kind of contract with these immigration agencies, immediately cut their contracts, it would make a huge impact and create enormous political pressure for these human rights abuses to end.”, Other tech companies face similar dilemmas. The Guardian reported recently that at least 97 people have been shot and killed by CBP since 2003. In June, employees at Salesforce called for the company to withdraw its contract with US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) in opposition to the agency’s implementation of the Trump administration’s policy of family separation. CBP uses Salesforce Community Cloud and Analytics for recruiting new agents and supporting them in the field “to drive efficiencies around U.S. border activities,” according to a press release on March 6. I value everybody’s speech.”, On March 6, 2018, the tech giant announced that CBP would be “deploying Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and Service Cloud to modernize its recruiting process, from hire to retire, and manage border activities and digital engagement with citizens.”. The sort of situation that’s arisen this week isn’t going to be a one-off. Sign and send the petition to your U.S. senators: Focus on COVID-19 relief immediately, not Trump’s judicial nominations. Salesforce Hit For Contract With U.S. Customs And Border Protection - 08/27/2018. Sometimes direct action isn’t going to be possible or effective and in those cases indirect enablement is a positive move. If every company that has any kind of contract with these immigration agencies, immediately cut their contracts, it would make a huge impact and create enormous political pressure for these human rights abuses to end. Mr. Benioff, we know you really personally care about these issues and we implore you to listen to your conscience and show that you really care about immigrant families. SAP TechEd 2020: Low-Code/No-Code to the Rescue? 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We are not working with CBP regarding the separation of families at the border, nor are any Salesforce services being used by CBP for this purpose. Meanwhile, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, has claimed since the company’s contract with CBP does not deal directly with activities at the US-Mexico border, Salesforce will not drop their contract. A dozen or so people accompanied by a 14-foot, 800-pound cage gathered in downtown San Francisco Tuesday morning to protest Salesforce’s contract with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy.. Today is the first day of Dreamforce, Salesforce’s … This marks the third major tech company, following Microsoft and Amazon, whose employees have protested when their company sells its technology to the government. Salesforce contract management software is built upon the world’s number-one CRM solution, and operates entirely out of the cloud. We’re committed to diversity and equality. In a letter to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, … Most well-publicized is the separation of families. So, for example, in countries where there is LGBTQ equality activism underway, empower those organizations with the latest marketing tech to support the promotion of their message. That’s why I’m inspired about Dreamforce – because of all of you, our Trailblazers. Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, economic well-being, and health care were top priorities during the November election.... Sign the petition: TRUMP MUST IMMEDIATELY CONCEDE and Congress must ensure he steps down. We have seen that Salesforce has spoken out against the government’s inhumane practice of separating and detaining children. S caught in the crossfire here this is a premier partner of diginomica was ushered away inhumane immoral... 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