Google sacks 48 employees over sexual harassment allegations

Google has fired 48 employees, 13 of whom were senior executives, since 2016 following sexual harassment allegations against them, said a statement from the US tech company.

News agency AFP on Friday reported that Google chief executive Sundar Pichai in his reply to a New York Times report said in a letter to its employees that the company maintains an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct.

Earlier, a report in the Times stated that Andy Rubin, a senior employee and an Andriod creator in the company had received an exit package worth $90 million for leaving the company after allegations of sexual misconduct had come up against him. It also reported that the tech giant has in the past covered up other claims of sexual harassment in its workplace.

When asked for a reaction on the report, Google released an email sent to employees from Pichai stating that 48 people had been terminated for sexual harassment in the past two years and none received ‘an exit package’, reported AFP.

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The statement further added, “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.”

“We are dead serious about making sure we provide a safe and inclusive workplace,” said Pichai. “We want to assure you that we review every single complaint about sexual harassment or inappropriate conduct, we investigate and we take action.”

Meanwhile, Rubin’s spokesperson Sam Singer also rejected the allegations against his client and in a statement to the news agency, said that Rubin left the company on his own terms in 2014 to launch a venture capital firm and technology incubator Playground.

The report from the news agency also states that Rubin later went ahead and found the smartphone company Essential.

Mr Pichai in the letter told his employees that the New York Times story was ‘difficult to read’ and that Google was ‘dead serious’ about providing a ‘safe and inclusive workplace’.

According to the New York Times report, two unnamed Google executives were quoted as saying that the then chief executive Larry Page had asked for Rubin’s resignation after the company had confirmed a complaint by a female employee about a sexual encounter in a hotel in 2013.

The Times also cited various court documents and interviews in its report where it claimed that Google had shielded three senior executives including Rubin after allegations of sexual misconduct came up against them.

But Rubin was reported by BBC to have said that he did not engage in any such sexual misconduct and left Google on his own accord.