California software firm pledges to help employees leave Texas over abortion law
It’s not the first time Salesforce has made a political statement. The company boycotted Indiana, claiming a state law there would encourage LGBTQ+ discrimination
Pro-Life demonstrators gather outside the Texas capitol in Austin last May in support of the state passing the fetal heartbeat law banning abortions after approximately six weeks. (Photo: Anna Smith/Austin American) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wokeness has become rampant in corporate America over the last two years and every day, it gets worse. The latest potshot taken at Christian and family values in the U.S. was fired by Salesforce, a San Francisco-based software company that is no stranger to idiotic “woke” policies.
A law banning abortion from as early as 45 days into pregnancy ― a fetal heartbeat bill ― has gone into effect in Texas. It bans abortions after the detection of a heartbeat in the fetus, which typically occurs around that key six-week benchmark.
The law, took effect after the Supreme Court last week refused to hear an emergency appeal by abortion providers. Abortion doctors, clinics and women's rights groups have heavily criticized the law, which gives any individual in the state the right to sue doctors who perform an abortion past the six-week point.
Referred to by the Texas legislature as the "Heartbeat Act," the bill was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in May, but did not take effect until September 1. It was further delayed until the SCOTUS decision.
In response, Salesforce, is offering to relocate employees out of Texas over the Lone Star State's new anti-abortion law. In a company-wide message sent last Friday, Salesforce told its employees the company would assist any employee who wants to relocate from Texas because of the law.
The message, obtained by America’s Conservative Voice, referred to the bill as directly impacting personal-choice issues for many of the company’s employees, especially women.
“We recognize and respect that we all have deeply held and different perspectives. As a company, we stand with all of our women at Salesforce and everywhere. With that being said, if you have concerns about access to reproductive healthcare in your state, Salesforce will help relocate you and members of your immediate family.”
If they indeed respected “deeply held and different perspectives,” Salesforce would also honor those who hold to pro-life policies. But we won’t be seeing that any time soon.
Gov. Mike Parson (R-MO) may call a special session for this fall to consider legislation to prevent the federal government from enforcing Biden’s vaccine mandates, with the possibility the state could also debate a new fetal heartbeat bill. (Photo: Charlie Riedel/Associated Press) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Salesforce may have other fronts upon which to fight its chosen battle. As the result of SCOTUS declining a hearing on the fetal heartbeat out of Texas, Missouri has begun drafting legislation similar to the controversial Texas law. Missouri already has a fetal heartbeat bill, designating the cut-off for a legal abortion at eight weeks. A federal judge in St. Louis struck down in a case that is now making its way to the Supreme Court. Other states are also following Texas’ and Missouri’s leads.
Initially, it was believed there would be no action taken in the Show-Me State until January with the beginning of the next session of the legislature. However, Joe Biden’s equally controversial executive orders mandating vaccinations for all federal employees, and for private companies employing 100 or more people, has given Missouri Gov. Mike Parson pause.
A Republican, Parson is considering a special session of the legislature this fall to counter the federal government’s efforts to enforce the executive orders in Missouri.. There would be nothing to prevent the introduction of the state’s own new fetal heartbeat legislation for consideration in that special session. Former Gov. Eric Greitens (R) immediately signed the previous law, now under federal court challenge, into law. Parson, Greitens’ Lt. Gov., also supported the bill.
Such legislation could be given emergency status, meaning it would go into effect immediately. That is going to be the case with the anti-mandate legislation as it stands now.
Our questions for Salesforce, in light of its relocation offer over a strict Texas abortion law, would be these: What of your employees who strongly object to California’s lockdowns, mask orders and limited business hours due to the CCP virus? Are you going to relocate them, too?
What about those who object to Oregon and Washington using taxpayer money to pay for so-called “gender reassignment” therapy and surgery? Will they be allowed to move out of those states at company expense? Or will Salesforce pay the moving expenses for employees who live in New York with its high tax rates to which they object?
No? We didn’t think so. That wouldn’t be “woke,” would it?
After news of Salesforce's offer to its employees broke, company CEO Marc Benioff tweeted:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) responded positively to Benioff in a reply to his tweet, "Welcome to California." Apparently Newsom doesn’t know the company is already in California.
Benioff and Salesforce have, in the past, made it where they stand politically. In 2015, the company launched a boycott of the State of Indiana over then-Gov. Mike Pence signing into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which critics said would lead to LGBTQ+ discrimination.
"Today we are canceling all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination," Benioff said in March 2015.
In similar statements as Salesforce’s on the Texas anti-abortion bill, other San Francisco-based companies ― notably, Uber and Lyft ― have said they will pay the legal fees of any Texas drivers who incur fines related to the law. Under the law, ride-sharing drivers could face fines of up to $10,000 if they drive a woman to an abortion clinic.
"This law is incompatible with people's basic rights to privacy, our community guidelines, the spirit of rideshare, and our values as a company," the founders of Lyft and the company's general counsel said.
With irony, we note that Lyft also took the additional step of donating $1 million to Planned Parenthood. After making a statement about basic personal rights, Lyft gives financial support to an organization dedicated to denying those same rights to the unborn.
All this Fascist posturing ill serves these companies, their employees and their customers. Unfortunately, Salesforce’s customers are likely under pressure to be equally woke in their own policies. Even if those firms’ leadership are not anxious to make a statement advocating abortion, their woke employees and suppliers, like Salesforce, force them to do so.
The election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency brought woke hatred to the surface and changed the political landscape for the worse. (Photo: Diane Williams/Reuters) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This action by Salesforce exemplifies a pattern of wokeness which is actually a culture of hate. It was an undercurrent in American society during the Obama years, but it quickly came to the surface with the 2016 election that saw Donald J. Trump upset the Fascist Left’s favorite, Hillary Clinton. The language quickly deteriorated with his ascending to the Oval Office with no political experience.
“I hate Trump supporters, their divisiveness is destroying our country.”
Phrases like that quickly became quite common in daily political discourse, but the question we must ask ourselves is: What that means for America? The Democrat Party has been consumed by a race to condemn insensitive and offensive speech ― a noble mission for sure but one that has critical drawbacks. As our anger grew, the hate campaign picked up a momentum of its own.
The campaign to eliminate insensitive and offensive speech became a campaign of insensitive and offensive speech that the purveyors of that speech forgave themselves for spewing. Now it has escaped the reins by which well-meaning people may have hoped to steer it to better our nation.
When the woke talk politics, it is as though the need to be woke supersedes productivity. Each person attempts to paint themselves as a greater social-justice warrior than the next, and the conversation quickly devolves into an echo-chamber of platitudes that leaves everyone back at Square One. That attitude almost instantly limits our capacity to honestly share how we feel about issues in our country.
Because of that, so too does our inclination and desire to address these who embrace the darkness of wokeness. The idea of having even moderate, much less conservative opinions, has become a social crime. The very people who could once find the middle ground between parties are forced to pick a side. Often neither side is particularly palatable to some people.
Salesforce, Lyft, Uber and other San Francisco companies are feeding the divisiveness, fanning the fire of hate, driving a wedge into the U.S. populace, refusing to make way for differing opinions about abortion and multiple other issues. They are instead forcing their own opinions on everyone else.
Corporations were declared “persons” by the Supreme Court several years ago. Many individuals ― mostly the woke ― have decried that decision as endowing U.S. companies with rights equal to individuals. That opposition fails to recognize the SCOTUS decision also put on those entities the responsibility of acting in a noble, law-abiding manner, embracing the Constitution and local and state laws as good, just and right.
These woke companies have rejected the concept of being “good citizens” while clinging to their “rights” as “persons” to do as they please. With freedom comes responsibility.
Their intractable stance does not serve well the American community.
Mike Nichols is a conservative, a patriot, U.S. Army veteran, a licensed professional counselor, political enthusiast, sports fan and writer living with his beautiful wife Liz in the Heartland. He is a regular contributor at has a regular blog at the GenZConservative news website and a Facebook presence at Americas Conservative Voice-Facebook.