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By: Cyrus Akbarpour
Last
month, some of our subscribers received letters from Monster.com
notifying them of changes in the company’s policies:
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control, as well as some states, maintain sanctions which prohibit
U.S. companies from conducting certain business activities with
organizations located in or residents of the following countries…In
order for Monster.com to comply with applicable U.S. federal and
state regulations, we will be removing the Sanctioned Countries
from the site. Your resume included one (or more) of the Sanctioned
Countries. Therefore, your resume will be altered, removing all
Sanctioned Countries from your resume(s).
"I was preparing for a trip and did not have time to check
my resume on Monster.com, but I could just imagine how it would
look - a person with no college degrees looking for an executive
job! Fat chance!" said Farhad Kashani, co-founder and president
of the Iranian-American High Tech Executives (HITEXEC), which received
many e-mails regarding this subject from its members.
"People like me who completed all their education in Iran with
nothing but contributions in the United States could kiss finding
a job goodbye
through the largest online employment outlet," continued Kashani.
"Many of our members received their undergraduate degrees in
Iran. Just imagine how Monster.com’s new policy would affect
them, especially if other employment agencies followed suit."
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC – www.niacouncil.org)
took the lead in not letting Monster.com get away with imposing
this sanction. NIAC mobilized very quickly, and after investigating
and speaking to representatives at both Monster.com and the Treasury’s
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), found that not only was
Monster.com implementing policies that were inappropriate and bordering
on discrimination, but OFAC was not behind them in any way.
An unnamed OFAC spokesman said the agency had not directed Monster.com
to make the changes. He also said, "OFAC regulations do not
govern speech. OFAC regulations govern transactions."
Then why had Monster.com taken it upon itself to take such unnecessary
measures? The motivation behind this new policy is still unclear.
"We were confident that we would win this case, but I have
to admit, we were quite surprised when Monster.com caved within
a day after implementing its policy," explained Dokhi Fassihian,
NIAC legislative analyst.
"We prepared all the work in a very short period of time and
launched our campaign with a bang,” said Marjan Ehsassi, NIAC
executive director. "We really caught Monster.com off guard.
Its position changed three times over a one-day period!"
NIAC is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-religious educational organization
founded only one year ago after the 9/11 tragedy to protect Iranians
and Iranian-American interests in the United States, serving as
a cohesive voice for the community. The organization has more than
500 volunteers nationwide.
"This is a major victory for NIAC and the Iranian-American
community. It shows that we can accomplish great things when we
work together and use intelligent strategies", said Trita Parsi,
NIAC president. "We are now working with a leading civil rights
law firm to set up a permanent program working on anti-discrimination
and anti-defamation issues."
During this short period, Monster.com received more than 1,500 complaints
through the NIAC website alone. An Iranian Executive wrote:
“As an Iranian-American executive whose company has used Monster.com
in the past, I am gravely disturbed by Monster.com's new policy
to delete the word "Iran" from its standard format for
resumes. This is clearly an act of racial and ethnic discrimination.
I respectfully request the reversal of this decision and a public
statement announcing this reversal.
Monster.com's policy CANNOT be described as "just abiding by
the law". The fact remains that it is legal for a US company
today to help a young Iranian in Iran find employment in the US.
Furthermore the company’s actions also target any Iranian
anywhere in the world. Again this clearly shows intent for racial
and ethnic discrimination, rather than a requirement to abide by
the law.
Monster.com's reading of the sanctions, to include information exchange
that connects these two parties, is flawed. In actuality, information
exchange is exempt from the sanctions. If it weren't, writing travel
books about Iran would be illegal too.
I hope that by my bringing this shortsighted and potentially illegal
decision to Monster.com’s attention, corrective measures will
be made to reverse this policy promptly.”
Letters like this and the prompt action of the NIAC caused Monster.com
to change its mind. In response to this executive’s letter,
Kevin Mullins, Monster.com representative, wrote:
“First, I'd like to start out by saying that Monster.com has
never discriminated and will never discriminate against individuals
based on their ethnic origin or background. Millions of job seekers
of diverse backgrounds from all over the world use Monster.com to
advance their careers and their lives - we would never engage in
any type of discriminatory action. Second, I apologize if our email
about our actions and the true intent behind them was misunderstood.
As a global company headquartered in the United States, it is our
obligation and absolute necessity to follow the law governing our
country. And it is in line with the policies of the Office of Foreign
Assets Control. (Please use the following link, http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sanctions/index.html
to review some of the federal regulations that govern this issue.)
As our email communication stated, the U.S. Department of Treasury's
Office of Foreign Assets Control, as well as some states, maintain
sanctions which prohibit U.S. companies from conducting certain
business activities with organizations located in and residents
of the following countries: Burma/Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
North Korea, Sudan or Syria (the "Sanctioned Countries").
United States companies and individuals are also prohibited from
providing certain services to sanctioned countries and individuals,
and from facilitating transactions by others in sanctioned countries
and with sanctioned individuals.
In order to be in full compliance with the applicable regulations,
Monster.com had to remove accounts from residents of the Sanctioned
Countries as well as the job postings from those countries. We also
removed the Sanctioned Countries from the list of countries on the
"Target Location" options in the drop-down menu of our
resume/profile builder. None of the actual content of any of the
resumes was altered in any way.
Job seekers now have a separate drop-down menu of options from which
to select the country where they received their education. The Sanctioned
Countries will be included in this new menu. Initially, the complex
technology behind Monster.com's resume/profile builder did not support
separate drop-down menu options for individual sections, requiring
that the country list for "Target Location" be consistent
with the list for "Education." The new technology will
allow for customized menus for each.
To be clear, we are not censoring all mentions of the Sanctioned
Countries, nor are we removing any references to these nations included
within resumes. The only change on Monster.com's resume/profile
builder is that the drop-down menu listing of countries for country
of residence and target locations, which will no longer include
the Sanctioned Countries as options.
I apologize if there are any misunderstandings regarding this matter.”
"Monster.com has given us a written guarantee that the education
part of the resume will be resolved, but there is still work to
be done if we want to resolve parts of the policy that do not allow
job seekers in Iran to post resumes or employers to post job opportunities
in Iran," continued Parsi.
"NIAC’s fast action and positive results could be equated
to the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign in the recent war with
Iraq, leading to a fast victory for the U.S. forces by overwhelming
the Iraqi military in the first few days of the war," said
Kashani, who has been an executive with Silicon Valley firms for
14 years, but is currently unemployed and finds online services
such as Monster.com critical in facilitating his job search process.
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