Levi Strauss | Promoting Diversity
Levi Strauss CEO Chip Bergh joins “Squawk on the Street” to discuss the company’s diversity initiatives, including appointing a Black board member.
Transcript
you guys have been pretty upfront about
I guess you could say the lack of
diversity a 5% of corporate staff 2% at
the executive level as we said no black
people on the board of directors how
long did you how long ago did you
identify that problem and what do you do
now to address it well it didn’t really
take the data to identify the problem a
little bit of look to your left and look
to your right but you know as a company
we have a very long track record of
standing for racial equality and social
justice back in the day when we did have
factories here in the US we desegregated
our factories back in the early 1950s
ten years before the Civil Rights Act
and as I said we have a long track
record of working for social justice and
equality levi-strauss foundation just in
the last five years has contributed over
37 million dollars just here in the US
and I would say largely here in the Bay
Area to organizations that fight for
equality and social justice and the vast
majority of those organizations are led
by black and brown leaders so after the
George Floyd killing and the string of
racial issues externally on the outside
world we we posted a public letter
decrying racism and basically saying we
need to channel our motion of the moment
to interaction and you know it really
forced us as a country I think to look
in the mirror and say you know for all
of the progress that many of us think
have been made the real sad reality is
that there is systemic racism in this
country and it forced me as the CEO to
take that same heart look in the mirror
and the same hard look at the data of
our company and face the same brutal
truth that what the data says here in
the US where we’ve got racial diversity
numbers we have a very diverse company
company-wide here in the US but it is
driven largely by our retail
organization and distribution
organization if we board down and look
at the corporate headquarters as you
said the diversity picture is is a
problem
I mean I’ll just say it straight up we
have an issue here and we need to
address it and so that’s what led us to
publish our diversity data publicly it’s
on Levi Strauss comm you know the first
step towards making progress is to admit
that you have an issue and to admit that
you’ve got an opportunity to work
against and starting to put into place
an action plan to really drive a more
diverse organization in our corporate
headquarters
I guess the operation would go ahead
well I was gonna say chip operationally
within HR what kind of adjustments need
to be made to get half of your
candidates be people of color if the
jobs open and you’re not at 50% the job
remains open and to spend until further
notice well there’s I mean there’s no
question Carl we are able to prepare
candidates slates that are 50 percent
people of color there that’s not an
issue you will be able to do that on and
and we’ve been doing it for the last
couple of months for us to make the
change this starts fundamentally deep
inside you have to believe that a
diverse organization that reflects the
consumers who were serving you have to
believe that that diverse organization
is going to out-compete a homogenous
organization every day and so this is a
business imperative as much as it is us
doing the right thing you know I like to
say if we’re not actively fighting
racism and putting actions into place to
do something about it then then we’re
complicit and the best place for us to
start is inside our own house so that is
first and foremost our focus and there’s
no doubt in my mind we will not have to
compromise quality you will not have to
compromise
to make the kind of progress that we
need to make here and I will lead at the
end of the day we’re going to be a much
stronger company when we make that kind
of progress
you
