By Douglas MacMillan, Ezequiel Minaya and Mengqi Sun
Thousands of Google employees around the world staged a series
of walkouts Thursday to protest a workplace culture that they say
promotes and protects perpetrators of sexual harassment at the tech
giant.
The organizers of the walkout published a letter demanding the
company change its policies to make it safer for women to report
instances of sexual harassment and to bolster the transparency of
those reports.
"There are thousands of us, at every level of the company," the
letter said. "And we've had enough."
The protests marked perhaps the largest display of employee
activism concerning sexual harassment in a year in which the issue
has come to the fore at companies world-wide. The events were also
striking, given they occurred at a company that has long been
considered at the leading edge of efforts to empower and support
employees through generous perks and a permissive stance toward
internal disagreements.
Google more recently, though, has had to take steps to rein in
workplace debate, which at times led to lower productivity, the
company said.
Employee activism at Google is rising in response to a New York
Times article last week on how the Alphabet Inc. unit protected
three senior executives over the past decade after they were
accused of sexual misconduct, including one who received a $90
million exit package in 2014. Google declined to comment on details
in the Times story.
Photos of the walkout flooded social media on Thursday, as
Google employees filled the streets outside of offices from Mumbai
to Dublin.
The largest crowds were at Google's main campus in Mountain
View, Calif., where thousands of employees encircled a stage.
There, organizers of the walkout thanked the crowd and began
leading chants. Many employees who gathered were quiet, continuing
to check their phones and chat about work, but the atmosphere was
punctuated by calls of "Time's up!" and "Not OK!" News helicopters
hovered overhead.
One employee told a story about how she was sexually harassed by
her colleague, according to two people who heard the speech. The
female employee described going to human resources to file a
complaint, but was disappointed because HR didn't take action, the
people said. Her manager told her they would fire the person
responsible if that person was "less important" than her, the
speaker said.
In New York, throngs of Google employees filed out of glass
doors at the company's office in lower Manhattan.
They gathered at nearby Hudson River Park and wielded signs with
slogans such as "Worker's rights are women's rights."
Google employee Demma Rodriguez -- 38 years old and one of the
organizers -- told the crowd that workers wanted the tech company
to live up to its potential as "the brain trust of the world."
"I am fed up," she said through a bullhorn. "Every single person
here has the tools to change Google."
At a New York Times conference on Thursday, Chief Executive
Sundar Pichai said the company was trying to address employee
concerns. "Moments like this show we didn't always get it right. We
are listening to employees, which is why today is important," he
said. "Words alone aren't enough, you have to follow up with
actions." He also said the company no longer makes payouts to
employees who are accused of sexual harassment.
In their letter, employees demanded Google remove its
mandatory-arbitration clauses from employee contracts, a widespread
but controversial practice that prevents U.S. workers from suing
their employer in open court. Companies prefer arbitration for
sexual-harassment claims because it tends to lead to quicker
settlements at a lower cost than class-action suits and may spare
companies from bad publicity.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, corporations have come under
greater public pressure to scrap their arbitration policies, said
Steve Smith, communications director for the California Labor
Federation, an umbrella group for state labor unions. "Companies
are definitely seeing that this is bad for their image," Mr. Smith
said.
Uber Technologies Inc. and Microsoft Corp. both stopped
requiring arbitration for sexually related claims in the past
year.
The letter also asked that an employee representative be put on
the board of directors and that the company's chief diversity
officer report to Mr. Pichai.
It is becoming more common for chief diversity officers to
report directly to CEOs as companies try to stamp out harassment
and make gender and racial promotion and pay equity a priority.
Apple Inc. and NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast Corp., have
chief diversity officers that report to the CEO rather than a chief
people officer.
It isn't common for employees to be represented on boards.
At Google -- where employees this year have protested the
company's work with the Defense Department and the company's
controversial plan to explore a censored search engine for Chinese
citizens -- employee outrage over sexual-harassment policies has
reached a boiling point.
In New York, Laura Rokita -- a 31-year-old software engineer who
has worked at Google for three years -- said she was surprised and
angry after reading the recent New York Times article that
described how the company has dealt with sexual-harassment claims.
She said she walked out Thursday to incite changes at the company
and to support colleagues.
"When the article came out last week about some unfortunate
events that happened in the past, a lot of Googlers were not happy
about that," Ms. Rokita said. "We want to see a difference in the
future."
Thomas Kneeland, a Google software engineer, said there is a
sense among employees that they work at a special place with a
mission to change the world, he said. But he acknowledged there was
"widespread frustration and deep-seated anger" in the ranks.
"We can be exceptional moving forward," Mr. Kneeland said. "It
remains to be seen how."
Write to Douglas MacMillan at douglas.macmillan@wsj.com and
Ezequiel Minaya at ezequiel.minaya@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 01, 2018 18:40 ET (22:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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