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.”
Over one thousand Google employees and allies are gathered at Harry Bridges Plaza in #SF as part of today’s #GoogleWalkout @sfchronicle pic.twitter.com/mRaUPXP9z7
— Jessica Christian (@jachristian) November 1, 2018
At Google HQ in Mountain View, crowd chanting “Women’s rights are workers’ rights” pic.twitter.com/NCQ8iwppXG
— Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) November 1, 2018
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.
Employee activism at Google is rising in response to a New York Times article last week on how the Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -0.42% GOOG, -0.63% 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.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
Also popular on WSJ.com:
On hold for 45 minutes? Might be your secret customer score.
Subaru and Toyota to recall more than 400,000 vehicles globally.
