- Canadian Electronic Commerce Shopify has eight employee resource groups.
- In 2023, Shopify ceased to finance these ergs, which serve employees of under-represented groups.
- Although ERGs are always operational, sources say they have become limited.
Shopify froze the funding of its resource groups for employees at the end of 2023, according to two people familiar with the issue.
Shopify has eight erg serving each of the sub-represented communities, including black, Latinos and LGBTQ +employees. ERGs provide support to employees while raising awareness of the additional obstacles that entrepreneurs in these communities may be confronted.
The ERGs have also sometimes planned events for the shopping community in Shopify and paid the speakers to come and share their stories with the employees.
“They were spaces for employees to be their true self,” said a person to Business Insider.
But two people said that ERG financing was increasingly limited over time, until they were no longer able to pursue initiatives that would require additional monetary support from the company. The financing of ERG events had not resumed at least halfway until 2024.
Shopify representatives did not return the requests for BI comments to the current state of financing the ERG.
Shopify fell into other diversity and inclusion initiatives. The company dismissed employees working on its construction in black and built native programs in January. These programs have provided resources, networking events and financing opportunities for black and Aboriginal merchants using Shopify. He also closed the slack channels he organized for traders participating in these programs, Betakit reported.
The teams responsible for these programs – also known as the fair trade team – had built an online directory highlighting Shopify stores led by black and indigenous entrepreneurs. The repertoire, called empowered by Shopify, is no longer online.
Shopify has also teamed up with Operation Hope to launch a project called One million Black Business (1 MOBB), in order to create a million new companies belonging to blacks in the United States and Canada by 2030. Shopify has promised $ 130 million on the initiative. Lance Triggs, which presides over 1 MOB with Operation Hope, told Betakit that the Shopify partnership was still underway, although the Shopify page which had previously provided information on this subject now redirects to the home page of the electronic commercial platform. The president of Shopify, Harley Finkelstein, sits on the board of directors Hope.
An open letter against the “most precious public technology company in Canada”
Some have opposed the apparent shopify disinvestment in the Canadian technology industry. Last week, a group of founders of Canadian technology published an open letter criticizing Shopify and other companies to “back up protections and support for women, 2SLGBTQIA +, people, black and native communities, immigrants and other marginalized groups”.
“Powerful forces in our technological sector want to reshape Canada in the image of those who consider inclusion as an obstacle, not an advantage. They put pressure on politicians, control media platforms and influence the policies that bring us closer to the division policy of our southern neighbor,” said the open letter.
He continues: “Thousands of us – entrepreneurs, marketing specialists, engineers and support staff – have integrated Canada into the leader in global technology, it’s today.
The open letter has also criticized “the most precious public technology company in Canada” – Shopify has a market capitalization of more than $ 140 billion – for the reception of the Yeezy store in Kanye West while it sold a single article: a t -shirt with a swastika. Shopify removed the window approximately 36 hours after its publication because it “did not engage in authentic trade practices,” said a spokesperson in Bi earlier in February.
Laura Gabor, one of the authors of the open letter, said that she and her co-authors wanted to point out that Canadian technology values diversity. Gabor is co -founder of the Ecologicaa connected air purifier brand, and has also created the Canadian technological community What in the Tech, the site where the letter has been published.
“There have been a lot of conversations in group cats and underground about the way we stop these apparently anti-standing policies,” Gabor told Bi. “But there has been very little aloud or publicly.”
She said the letter had nearly 1,000 signatures, including a former Shopify employee and a person describing himself as a Shopify client.
Although they did not sign the open letter, several former leaders of Shopify, including the former director of Products Craig Miller and the former main director of relations with investors Katie Keita, publicly expressed accommodation by the company of the Yeezy store before being withdrawn.
“Even if @shopify considers it” morally ambiguous “to empower the exponential accumulation of hatred towards a religion / ethnic origin, it is, at the very least, a bad public service,” said Keita in an article on X.
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