This is the first time in the history of IT Industry that employees of multinational company staged walkout at the same time across countries for a cause. Kudos to Googlers. Google Employees already announced a Walkout protest on 1st November, 2018 against the workplace culture of sexual harassment, misconduct and lack of transparency in dealing with the sexual harassment complaints. In India, around 150 employees from Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurugram has staged walkout yesterday.
The Android creator Andy Rubin was protected from sexual allegations and quit the company with exit package $90 million! Similarly there is no serious action against the sexual harassers from the top management. This has angered the employees and bring them united across all the Google development centers in the world to change the prevailing workplace culture.
They have kept the following demands to Google management:
-An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.
-A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity.
-A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report.
-A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.
-Elevate the Chief Diversity Officer to answer directly to the CEO and make recommendations directly to the board of directors. In addition, appoint an employee representative to the board.
This workplace culture of sexual harassment is being both mental and physical harassment for the women employees. It denies the equality as well as safety at workplaces for women employees. The management is not serious about these gender discrimination/violence at workplaces instead it was protecting the perpetrators at the top of the power structure with hefty exit packages.
This is one of first ever bold step attempted by the IT industry working class by just Walking Out of their bay area collectively at the same time across world against the violence on fellow women employees at workplace. Their collective voice has shaken the management and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has assured that serious action will be taken against every incident of sexual harassment or any inappropriate conduct reported.
Googlers has shown the way for the entire IT working class that only through ‘our unity’, we can change our workplace conditions.
Parimala
President
Forum for IT Employees(FITE)- Tamilnadu
9840713315
