Why are Google employees staging a massive walkout today?
Google employees staged a massive walkout across the world Thursday to protest accusations of sexual misconduct within the company.
The New York Times published a story on Oct. 25 that detailed how Google allegedly suppressed a sexual misconduct claim against Andy Rubin, who co-founded Android Inc. Sources told The Times that Rubin was accused of pushing a woman to give him oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, but he left the company in 2014 with a $90 million exit package with no hint of the accusation made against him.
Rubin denied those accusations on Twitter.
The report had other examples of an alleged lack of transparency dealing with claims of sexual harassment against some executives.
“The article provided a narrow window into a culture we, as Google employees, know well,” some Google employes wrote in a story published in The Cut. “These stories are our stories. We share them in hushed tones to trusted peers, friends, and partners. There are thousands of us, at every level of the company. And we’ve had enough.”
Staffers in countries across the world walked out of their offices at 11:10 a.m. local time, as reported by CNN.
What do the protesters hope to achieve? Google employees listed a few demands in their story in The Cut.
They include: ending forced arbitration, ending pay and opportunity equity, having a publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report, and having the company’s chief diversity officer “answer directly to the CEO,” as seen in the article.
Sam Dutton, a developer advocate at Google, explained his personal reason for joining in the walkout, according to CNN.
“We’re walking out in support of those who’ve been harassed anywhere in the workplace,” he said, “and to ensure that perpetrators are not rewarded and are not protected.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent out an email the same day of The New York Times article to assure his employees that “in the last two years, 48 people have been terminated for sexual harassment,” according to USA Today. He said he was “dead serious” about combating sexual harassment in the company.
Pichai said he supports the walkout because “I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel,” according to Fortune.
“I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society…and, yes, here at Google, too,” he said in a company email, according to Fortune.
This story was originally published November 1, 2018 at 10:50 AM.