There has been official training at multiple, large tech companies other than Intel specifically geared towards preventing even accidental use of language that can be taken out-of-context. The practice is alive and well.
Uber had training that said you could never call a driver an employee or anything related to that, they were 'driver partners' or some such with words that imply a platform user
Thats slightly diferent - there is a lot of law about employees status - mainly because the IRS doesn't want to lose out any $ not for any liberal concern for employees