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Journalism of Courage
By Kate Conger, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Katie Benner
Google is struggling to contain a growing internal backlash over its handling of sexual harassment and its workplace culture. Over the past week, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and the chief executive of its parent company, Alphabet, have taken multiple steps to calm its agitated 94,000-person work force. The anger arose after The New York Times revealed last week that Google had paid millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives accused of harassment and stayed silent about their transgressions.
Google later said it had fired 48 people for sexual harassment over the past two years; none received an exit package. Page and Pichai also issued apologies, with Pichai later saying his initial statement “wasn’t enough” and apologizing again. And one of the executives whom Alphabet continued employing after he was accused of harassment resigned Tuesday and did not obtain an exit package.
But employees’ dissatisfaction has not subsided. On Thursday, more than 1,500 — most of them women — plan to walk out of almost two dozen company offices around the world to protest the treatment, organizers said. “We don’t want to feel that we’re unequal or we’re not respected anymore,” said Claire Stapleton, 33, a product marketing manager at Google’s YouTube who helped call for the walkout. “Google’s famous for its culture. But in reality, we’re not even meeting the basics of respect, justice and fairness for every single person here.”
Also read: Google reveals 48 employees fired for sexual harassment
Nowhere has the tech employee activism been more evident than at Google. Workers have pushed back this year against the company’s artificial intelligence work with the Pentagon, saying their work shouldn’t be used for warfare. Google eventually decided not to renew its contract with the Pentagon. Employees also rebuked Pichai and other executives for developing a search engine for China that would censor results. Since then, Google has not moved forward on a search product for China. Google declined to comment.
The treatment of female employees has been an especially charged topic at Google. Just 31 percent of its global work force and about 26 percent of its executives are women. Google has also been sued by former employees and the Department of Labor, which claim that it underpaid women; the company has said it does not have a wage gap between male and female employees.
