Google hit by #MeToo walkouts
Employees at offices worldwide protest firm’s handling of sexual misconduct
In an unprecedented show of defiance, thousands of Google employees walked off the job Thursday from company offices around the world as anger over the tech giant’s handling of sexual misconduct in their workplace erupted into highly unusual public protest.
“The landscape has changed,” said San Jose State University management professor Meghna Virick, who studies workplace gender issues. “This is sort of the next wave of the #MeToo movement.”
Organizers said the pro- test hit at least 60 percent of Google offices worldwide, spreading across various time zones at 11:10 a.m. from Asia and Europe to New York and the Bay Area.
At the company’s Mountain View headquarters, at least 2,000 women and men walked out Thursday morning, some holding signs and chanting. “Hey leadership, this is what Googleyness looks like,” said one speaker. “Time is up for sexual harassment. Time is up for abuse of power. Time is up for systemic racism.”
The protests were fueled by revelations that Google awarded Andy
“We love the people who change theworld. Now we’re looking at a shift: Just because you’re a star performer doesn’t mean you can get away with being a jerk.” — Meghna Virick, San Jose State University management professor
Rubin, considered the father of the company’s Android operating system, a $90 million golden parachute after he was asked to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct. The New York Times reported late last month that Rubin was among three executives Google protected after such accusations. Rubin has said the allegations are false.
“We have always idolized star performers, particularly in Silicon Valley,” Virick said. “We love the people who change the world. Now we’re looking at a shift: Just because you’re a star performer doesn’t mean you can get away with being a jerk.”
Thursday’s walkout was the latest employee protest at the digital advertising titan. In the spring, Google backed away from its lucrative “Project Maven” deal providing artificial intelligence technology for the Pentagon’s drone program after employees protested. In August, Googlers pushed back over the company’s plan to offer a censored search engine in China.
But the walkout, its accompanying hashtag and a set of publicly released demands by seven employees who identified themselves as organizers, was a widespread, public rebuke of their employer.
At the headquarters rally Thursday, one woman took the microphone to tell the crowd she had been sexually harassed by a company executive and it took three years and complaints from many more women before Google got rid of him. Another woman told the audience a male co-worker had complimented her on her lipstick, then asked her to lick her lips.
The Google protest would not have happened in the absence of the # MeToo movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault, Virick said. “People would not have been as open to sharing some of their stories had the #MeToo movement not happened. It is now acceptable for women to say, ‘Something happened, and it wasn’t my fault.’ ”
Also unprecedented at Google was publication by protest organizers of a list of demands, including an end to forced arbitration in harassment and discrimination cases; an end to alleged inequities in pay; a commitment to
“These arbitration clauses havemanaged to veil the unpleasantness that has happened in these corporations. Companies have to come to the realization that you can no longer assume that you can keep things under wraps.” — Meghna Virick, San Jose State University management professor
placing women of color at all levels of the company; a public sexual-harassment “transparency report,” a clear process for anonymously reporting sexual misconduct; and promotion of the firm’s diversity chief to a position reporting directly to the CEO, plus appointment of an employee representative to the firm’s board.
“A company is nothing without its workers,” the seven core organizers said in a statement published on website The Cut. “From the moment we start at Google we’re told that we aren’t just employees; we’re owners. Every person who walked out today is an owner, and the owners say: Time’s up.”
The protest will put pressure not only on Google, but on other Bay Area tech companies to take effective action against sexual misconduct, Virick said.
“A lot of our companies here in Silicon Valley still have the bro culture. They still tend to be primarily male- dominated,” Virick said.
In its 2018 diversity report, Google said women make up 30.9 percent of its global workforce, a number it acknowledged had remained largely unchanged from the previous year. Women hold 21.4 percent of tech jobs, up 1.2 percent from the previous year.
The protesters’ top- ofthe-list demand for an end to forced arbitration in sexual harassment cases — a practice widely seen as a tactic for companies to skirt accountability and avoid having their images tarnished — will resonate among employees in other Bay Area tech firms, Virick predicted.
Pressure on companies has already grown as # MeToo has empowered women to expose harassers regardless of company policies, she said.
“These arbitration clauses have managed to veil the unpleasantness that has happened in these corporations,” Virick said. “Companies have to come to the realization that you can no longer assume that you can keep things under wraps.”
In a statement released Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Earlier this week, we let Googlers know that we are aware of the activities planned for today and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate. Employees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes going forward. We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action.”
In response to the Times article about Rubin, Pichai and diversity chief Eileen Naughton said in a letter to employees that the report was “difficult to read,” but that the company reviews and investigates every complaint about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct, and takes action.
“In recent years, we’ve made a number of changes, including taking an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority,” the letter said. “In the last two years, 48 people have been terminated for sexual harassment, including 13 who were senior managers and above. None of these individuals received an exit package.”
But organizers of the protest said in their statement that not enough has been done. “All employees and contract workers across the company deserve to be safe. Sadly, the executive team has demon- strated through their lack of meaningful action that our safety is not a priority,” the statement said. “We’ve waited for leadership to fix these problems, but have come to this conclusion: no one is going to do it for us.”
Virick said the key to the success of Thursday’s protest and others that may follow in other industries will be overcoming resistance.
“Companies, I think, have to really shift and say, ‘ Rather than trying to keep all this sexual misconduct from the public’s eye, we have to openly address it,’ ” Virick said. “Lip service isn’t going to work anymore.
“This is a wave of culture change that basically is going to have to happen acrossmany different companies.”