That question doesn't really make sense in the context of a US workplace.

The employee:HR relationship is fundamentally adversarial over here. HR's job is to protect the company, including from its own employees. They will throw you under the bus if it benefits the company.

Most people won't run into issues with them, but if you think that someone important to the company's bottom line is behaving inappropriately and you go to HR about it, how would you expect them to react? It's a matter of incentives.

What's the point you're trying to make? That irredeemable companies are a nightmare to work for?

Well of course they are. And just like irredeemable relationships, you need to move on and improve your judgement to avoid a repeat. Bemoaning on Slack achieves nothing.

The point the post you're replying to was trying to make (true or not) was that US companies have this problem unilaterally — so there's no point to trying to avoid companies based on it, as long as the US is where you choose to live.

Why would you trust any employer’s HR department? Their job is to reduce the company’s liability, not help you with your problems.

If you're hiring people or using your employer benefits their job is to help you with that.

> is our company discriminating, even unintentionally and do our LGBT and minority employees feel as safe and valued as our straight cis white employees

This is an HR responsibility. You either trust them to avoid and eliminate discrimination or you don't.

> This is an HR responsibility.

No, HRs responsibility is to make sure that legal liability for unlawful discrimination does not get imposed on the company, consistent with other corporate goals.

Actually mitigating discrimination may sometimes be the mechanism for that. Helping management create a smokescreen around acts of discrimination and find pretexts to force out people likely to discredit that smokescreen are also sometimes ways HR does that.

Mistaking HR for your advocate rather than management’s is a dangerous mistake.

With what authority will HR eliminate discrimination?

At a minimum, they’d need to stop accepting employee referrals (how can they tell if the referrals biased?) and take over the technical interview process.

Also, what happens when an exec elsewhere in the company discriminates against someone? Will HR have the power to unilaterally fire the exec? The CEO? The chairman of the board? How would they even detect the discrimination?

Sadly, declaring that one division of a company will eliminate discrimination doesn’t work. You need the whole company to pull together, though realistically, that won’t work either.

Society as a whole has to decide to solve the problem. Looping around to the article, one of the political parties passed hundreds of bills to disenfranchise minority voters; arguing that minorities should have basic rights is (in the US, at least) politically controversial.

Charitably, I hope the goal is to force my values on the employees, and silence dissent (no bigoted discussions at work).

Invoke Godwin’s Law, and… Done.

You're hired to produce value, not instigate political change.

If your goal is to "force my values on the employees, and silence dissent (no bigoted discussions at work)", then go start your own company (although your demands best describe a cult).

Even within this framework, “only discuss these things with HR” is untenable. Say a coworker harasses you and HR tells you it’s the first time someone has reported them. How can you know whether to revoke that trust without “talking politics” with your coworkers?

What if we don't, for not only Basecamp but for most employers worldwide in any industry? This is a very common view.

I live in Mexico and it's certainly not because I trust the police.

HR exists to protect the company not the individual

Because you don't truly find out how bad/toxic departments within a company are until you've been there a while.

I had the darkly humorous experience of meeting my HR rep for the very first time on a (pre-pandemic) video conference. Meeting agenda? I'm being fired!

Of course now that we all live in Covidland, we've had horror stories of whole business units just getting a pre-recorded message that they no longer work there.

Because "do I trust HR?" (a question to which the answer is almost certainly always "no, but it doesn't matter in most cases"), is only one minor criteria amongst a vast plethora of other important ones when deciding to join a company or not?

What kind of a question is that? The first and foremost function of HR is to protect the company, you have no reason to trust them. And who even has such a deep insight into the HR of a company at the time of your hiring that they decide whether to take the job or not based on that info?