Google staff want HR department probed

Activist employees allege the tech giant’s HR department is ‘broken’

BY Rachel Ranosa 10 May 2019

A week after Google employees mounted another round of protests on May 1, organisers of the walkout are now openly calling for an investigation of the technology company’s HR department.

In an article published on Medium, the activist employees pointed out how “Google management is failing, along with HR” as the company allegedly “progresses from crisis to crisis,” from sexual harassment to unequal pay.

“It’s time to put HR on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) and bring in someone we trust to supervise it. It’s time to escalate,” the protest organisers wrote.

The workers behind the movement ‘Google Walkout For Real Change’ claimed the company has not only failed to meet their demands – it has also started retaliating against leaders of the movement.

In November 2018, some 20,000 Google employees participated in demonstrations pressuring senior management to improve its handling of harassment and misconduct cases and to address inequalities between tenured and contract workers in terms of pay and growth opportunities.

“We issued a clear, articulate, and actionable set of demands. Google has had six months to meet these demands: in that time, they’ve partially met only one of them,” the employees said.

“We call for a transparent, open investigation of HR and its abysmal handling of employee complaints related to working conditions, discrimination, harassment and retaliation,” the group added.

“Google’s HR department is broken. Over and over again it prioritizes the company and the reputation of abusers and harassers over their victims. The collateral damage is all around us. Time is up. We need third party investigators.”