California Investigating Google, Black Female Workers Claim Harassment

By Teddy Grant Published: December 20, 2021

California Investigating Google, Black Female Workers Claim Harassment

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2019, file photo, the logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google France in Paris. Google users were briefly unable to access their Gmail accounts, watch YouTube videos or online documents when the internet giant’s services apparently suffered an outage on Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

In Summary

The internet search giant is the subject of an investigation by California over its alleged treatment of its Black female workers.

California is investigating Google over its alleged mistreatment of Black female employees, according to Reuters.

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing, California’s civil rights regulator, is looking into harassment and discrimination claims made by several Black women, having conducted multiple interviews with the women.

“Our goal is to ensure that every employee experiences Google as an inclusive workplace,” Google told Reuters. “We’ll continue to focus on this important work and thoroughly investigate any concerns, to make sure our workplace is representative and equitable.”

The company added that it’s committed to “building sustainable equity” for its Black employees and that it hired a record number of Black workers last year.

Google has been in hot water before over its treatment of Black workers. Last year, the search giant fired computer scientist Timnit Gebru, a technical co-lead of the company’s ethical-artificial intelligence team, after she refused to retract a paper calling out the company for not being transparent in one of its models that power the search engine and for not having a diverse workforce, The Verge reported.

Google data shows Black female employees left the company at the second-highest rate of any racial gender group, only behind Native American female employees, according to Reuters.