Texas super-employer offers to relocate staff as corporate backlash to abortion ban grows

Cloud-based software provider Salesforce has offered staff affected by Texas’s drastic de facto ban on abortion support to relocate, as a corporate backlash to the “devastating” law, continues to build.

Addressing “incredibly personal issues” created by the ban, a message to the company’s entire 56,000-strong workforce sent late last week, stated that any individual with “concerns about access to reproductive healthcare” in their location would be assisted in relocating to another.

The company is headquartered in California but has around 2,000 of its workers based in Texas.

“These are incredibly personal issues that directly impact many of us – especially women”, it said.

Aside from Salesforce, a number of prominent businesses are also taking action to support employees affected by the ban.

Match Group for example, which owns the dating app Tinder, as well as its rival Bumble, which is also based out of Texas, have both set up funds for employees seeking abortions out of state.

The state’s ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy took effect at the start of September and allows individuals to sue anyone seeking an abortion – as well as anyone assisting them in doing so – for $10,000.

In light of concerns that taxi drivers taking women to abortion clinics might also be prosecuted under the law, two of the leading US ride-sharing apps, Uber and Lyft have said they will pay the legal costs of any drivers sued for transporting women to or from procedures.

Aside from the personal implications for women in the state, the law threatens to throw a wrench in Texas’s previously blossoming tech industry.

With its low tax rates and relatively relaxed regulations, the state has itself as a highly appealing destination for tech companies, attracting giants like Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and CEO.

However, already straining to provide the skilled workers required at these companies, the law could heap additional pressure on the labour market – with US media reporting the bill is causing some workers to rethink their move to the state.