SAN JOSE: A lawsuit filed final Friday accused Google of systemic racial bias in opposition to Black workers, saying the search engine firm steered them to lower-level jobs, pays them much less and denies them alternatives to advance due to their race.
In keeping with a grievance looking for class-action standing, Google maintains a “racially biased company tradition” that favors white males, the place Black individuals comprise solely 4.4% of workers and about 3% of management and its expertise workforce.
The plaintiff, April Curley, additionally mentioned the Alphabet Inc unit subjected Blacks to a hostile work setting, together with by typically requiring they present identification or be questioned by safety at its Mountain View, California campus. Google didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The grievance was filed within the federal court docket in San Jose, California. It got here after that state’s civil rights regulator, the Division of Honest Employment and Housing, started investigating Google’s therapy of Black feminine staff and attainable discrimination of their office. Curley mentioned Google employed her in 2014 to design an outreach program to traditionally Black faculties.
She mentioned her hiring proved to be a “advertising and marketing ploy,” as supervisors started denigrating her work, stereotyping her as an “indignant” Black girl and passing her over for promotions. Curley mentioned Google fired her in September 2020 after she and her colleagues started engaged on a listing of desired reforms.
“Whereas Google claims that they had been seeking to enhance variety, they had been really undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black workers,” Curley’s lawyer Ben Crump mentioned in a press release. — Reuters