Morgan Stanley Employees Claim DEI Initiatives Caused ‘Divisive Culture’
Black employees still felt mistreated, used as showpieces, while white employees “to hire nonwhite candidates, even without the right experience, or to refrain from ousting underperforming ones.”
Morgan Stanley invested heavily in DEI in 2020, adding an Institute for Inclusion and making other moves after George Floyd’s death.
The initiatives have caused nothing but internal strife and more divisions, according to The Wall Street Journal. The complaints come from white and minority employees.
These employees claim the initiatives led to a more “divisive culture” with fewer winners than before.
Morgan Stanley vowed to hire more minorities, especially among its executive ranks.
Black employees exploded when they found out Morgan Stanley underpaid them. Ouch:
In interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees and others close to the firm, some Black staffers said they got little support after being recruited through a minority training program launched in 2021. Others said they were poached from competitors, but to lower-level roles than they had previously held or to positions that were eliminated within a year or two.
Anthony Fletcher, who runs a Chicago-area recruiting firm contracted in the effort to bring more Black employees on board, recalled asking one of Morgan Stanley’s regional diversity officers why so many of his recruits weren’t getting bigger jobs.
The reply: White financial advisers wouldn’t respect them, and it would be problematic for the firm, said Fletcher, who sent a letter to Gorman and the board outlining his concerns, and then sued Morgan Stanley for discrimination and unpaid fees in 2023.
Berdina Moore-Bonds sued Morgan Stanley last month, alleging the company denied her promotions that went to non-black employees who did not have her qualifications.
Holy moly, you guys:
Black staffers received emails starting in 2021 welcoming them to an online Black leadership program they hadn’t asked to be part of. The six-month McKinsey program included discussions on race and presenters teaching strategies such as tackling “common mindset challenges for Black leaders.”
In interviews, some invitees said they wondered why employees of other races weren’t included and likened the program to “special education” for Black employees. Senior Morgan Stanley executives, on the other hand, said they saw McKinsey’s offer to put on the program as an opportunity to support up-and-coming Black employees. Employees of all races have recently been invited to participate.
In 2020, Marilyn Booker, the woman hired in 1994 to head the diversity department, sued Morgan Stanley after the company fired her. Booker alleged the company fired her because she wanted to make diversity changes faster.
But she also claimed the company treated her as a “token” employee:
Marilyn Booker spent more than 25 years at the Wall Street brokerage, where she was one of few black women at the managing-director rank, the firm’s highest. She said in a court filing that her budget for diversity efforts was repeatedly cut, that she was “trotted out” as a token minority at public events, and that she was belittled by white colleagues while watching more than a dozen black executives leave the firm since 2017.
“The sentiment at the firm was ‘good riddance’ and ‘glad to see you go,’ rather than, ‘why are they leaving us?’ or ‘how could we do better?’” she said in a court filing. “In contrast, when white [managing directors] left or sought to leave, the firm made significant efforts to retain them.”
Morgan Stanley’s spokespeople have dismissed all of these complaints. You know, with the usual, “Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.”
White executives felt pressure “to hire nonwhite candidates, even without the right experience, or to refrain from ousting underperforming ones.”
Kevin Meyersburg, a white man, sued Morgan Stanley over his firing, claiming HR did not allow him to fire underperforming “employees because they were women or minority employees.”
Morgan Stanley would not fire those people because they were “diverse employees.”
A month after Meyersburg submitted his list, his boss told him Morgan Stanley fired him and replaced him with a black managing director:
A month later, the boss told Meyersburg over lunch that he was being laid off and replaced by a Black managing director. When Meyersburg pressed for a reason, the boss shrugged his shoulders and said it wasn’t about his performance, according to the suit. Then he asked: Would Meyersburg be willing to get his replacement up to speed? The boss worried the replacement lacked experience. Meyersburg declined.
A year earlier, Meyersburg’s base salary had been nearly doubled and he was awarded a $400,000 bonus for what the boss said at the time was recognition of his performance. When Meyersburg expressed his confusion about being laid off to another managing director, that person replied that it was because of DEI initiatives, Meyersburg’s suit said.
President Donald Trump has made moves to eliminate DEI since it has been shown to cause even more discrimination.
Morgan Stanley announced three weeks ago it would water down its diversity initiatives in the last report. From USA Today:
The report omitted the bank’s past statement that “a diverse and inclusive workforce is important to Morgan Stanley’s continued success.”
Instead, the report now says: “meritocracy is at the heart of Morgan Stanley’s talent development” and “a workforce that represents the societies in which we live and work, and our global client base, is integral to Morgan Stanley’s continued success.”
My gosh, why is it so hard to hire people based on qualifications? I have an idea. Apply with a number. Do not allow names, race, sex, religion, etc.
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Comments
I’m white; I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to be black in America. At the same time, I don’t give a (bleep) what color your skin happens to be. I’m only interested in your character, your intelligence and your moral anchorage.
That said, when reading this story I can only be reminded of Clarence Thomas’s memoir “My Grandfather’s Son” and his experience at Yale Law School. If you’ve not read the book, it’s a must and I won’t spoil the surprise but suffice it to say that it left a lifelong scar on him.
“…her budget for diversity efforts was repeatedly cut, that she was “trotted out” as a token minority at public events, and that she was belittled by white colleagues ”
Maybe because everyone knew why you were hired for a nonsense job with no value except to set everyone at each other’s throat and they had no respect for such a waste of money. It is a financial firm.
She’s complaining about not being allowed to operate her office as she sees fit (didn’t like the instructions from her superiors), complains of budget cuts as if her office was due as much funding as she thought appropriate, and complains of what can only be described as management’s “bad attitude” towards what she considered important work. Sounds like another day at work.
“When you’ve spent your entire life entitled, equality will feel like discrimination.”
Thomas Sowell
Heh, DEI created a divisive culture? Quelle surprise …
… it’s working exactly as DEI’s creators intended.
If Morgan Stanley didn’t know that, they are morons. Everyone on LI could have told you.
My employer (a State agency) has mandatory DEI training. I refused to participate. This is from my refusal message to my supervisor:
There is no question the subject matter is known to be politically polarized (making its promotion a sure sign that the State is promoting an agenda known to be favored by a certain political party), divisive, and likely to cause consternation among, and conflict between, employees. These “trainings” have a well-established history of creating ill-will between co-workers and promoting a toxic work environment. I do not come to work for this sort of environment, and I would expect (this agency) would do what it can to avoid creating such a situation on purpose. Yet here it is. For my own psychological well-being, I want no part of it.
This was over a year ago. My super passed my objections to HR. Zero blowback.
Well, DUH.
That’s the whole point of DEI.
DIE: Division, Intolerance, Exclusion.
Morgan Stanley Employees Claim DEI Initiatives Caused ‘Divisive Culture’
You don’t say.
You. Don’t. Say.
Hiring someone because of their race or sex means someone wasn’t hired because of their race or sex.
A struggle of class against class is a political struggle. Looks like Morgan Stanley just got an insight into Marxism.
I’m retired now, but I watched this process play out in my company. At first they tried to park unqualified Blacks in positions where they were visible, but would have little impact on our actual operations: Senior Vice President, HR Director, Chief of Training Division. Okay, no harm no foul. However the process crept down into functional levels. The female, Black Senior Vice President began to meddle in promotions, rewriting job descriptions specifically to fit her cronies, and directing selections. The HR Director also began to meddle with the process; Black employees became immune from criticism, let alone discipline. Me? As a White male, I saw the writing on the wall. The company had become a social experiment rather than actually pursuing new business and profit. The measurements were all racial rather than financial. I retired early and found employment in a small firm who couldn’t afford the luxury of DEI.
Look at the current state of affairs at Chattanooga Preparatory High….21 of 45 teachers lack state certification….
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/21-of-45-teachers-at-chatt-prep-unlicensed-hamilton-county-schools-finds
DEI divides people into categories of oppressor and oppressed. Of course it is divisive.
I was in the Army from the mid- to late-70s. Even then there were “race relations” classes. I complained to the instructors that the training was divisive for concentrating on our differences rather than on our similarities (shared humanity, for one).
Navy ‘77-‘81. Same thing.
This is not new. It has been going on since at least the min-1970s, but it was called Affirmative Action then, spawned by “equal opportunity” when lesser prepared candidates did not get the jobs they had the opportunity to apply for. The bottom-line result was that the hiring of lesser qualified into positions they could not do well caused the general public to think along the lines that all minority people they encountered at places they did business with were AA, or now DEI, hires. Even those who were actually qualified. People began using race, and to some degree sex, as as a quick and easy screening criteria.
Joe Biden was suitably impressed to see a qualified (in his opinion) black man running for president.
From my perspective the minute they started dumbing things down to accommodate blacks was a huge mistake. Even ones who were smarter suffered from piss poor culture. 10% or so were competent.
DEI is just AA on steroids. One side note … Anyone who watches Hallmark movies will note their interest in making the lead characters more diverse and now always slotting minorities into supporting positions, like the boss of the lead actress. It is almost comical to see the actor boss performing like a DEI boss might actually perform.
Check out the various ads for Oak Street Health and their affiliates on geezer TV channels. The patient is ALWAYS a befuddled old white man. Everyone else in the clinic is a Magic (Name Any Nonwhite Ethnicity), except for maybe the waiting room receptionist.
and to answer rodney kings question of
why cant we alll just get along
wellll now you know why
(The initiatives have caused nothing but internal strife and more divisions, according to The Wall Street Journal. The complaints come from white and minority employees.)
the next generation of the federal reserve is in the wings and their main “merits” were /are that they wrote college reports on how the only way to have equity was to lessen the wht peoples banks accounts
go look up lisa cook as one example
thanks fjb!!!
I have been told a thousand times, “Diversity is a strength.” Now I found out I was lied to.
The US Army finally admits the reason their tanks are strong is because they’re made out of homogeneous steel.
Gee, constantly picking at a scab makes it so the wound will never fully heal. Whoda thunk?
One should not judge a policy by its intention but rather by its results. I have no doubt that most people that championed DEI did it for some good intention. I also suspect that few, if any, of the implementers of DEI policies ever considered the effectiveness of implementation.