Google bows to demands to overhaul its abuse policy
SAN FRANCISCO: Google said on Thursday that it would end its practice of forced arbitration for claims of sexual harassment or assault after more than 20,000 employees staged a walkout last week to protest how the internet company handles cases of sexual misconduct.
Workers at Google had called for an end to arbitration, among other changes, as part of the walkout. The protest was prompted by a New York Times article last month that revealed the company had given a senior executive, Andy Rubin, a US$90 million (2.9 billion baht) exit package even after it found he had been credibly accused of sexual harassment.
The shift was announced at a delicate time for Google. Apart from the scrutiny over its workplace culture, employees have pushed back this year over issues like an artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon and the company’s exploration of a plan to relaunch its search platform in China. The employee protests over harassment, which followed the #MeToo movement, have been Google’s most public.
In an email to staff on Thursday, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, said he was altering the sexual harassment policies because “as CEO, I take this responsibility very seriously and I’m committed to making the changes we need to improve”.
“We will make arbitration optional for individual sexual harassment and sexual assault claims,” he added.
Mr Pichai also said Google would overhaul its reporting process for harassment and assault, provide more transparency to employees about incidents reported to the company and dock employees in their performance reviews if they do not complete sexual harassment training.
The company did not address some other demands by workers, including that it make its internal report on harassment public and put an employee representative on the board. It did not include temporary workers, vendors and contractors in the changes. Google said it would still require suppliers to investigate complaints raised among contractors.
Google Walkout For Real Change, the organisers behind last week’s employee walkout, said that although they were encouraged by the changes, the company did not go far enough in addressing systemic racism and other forms of discrimination.
“These forms of marginalisation function together to police access to power and resources,” the group said in a statement. “Sexual harassment is the symptom, not the cause. If we want to end sexual harassment in the workplace, we must fix these structural imbalances of power.”
At a companywide meeting on Thursday, Eileen Naughton, Google’s vice president of people operations, and Danielle Brown, its chief diversity officer said two people who attended were not authorised to speak publicly.