Ten of Thousands Workers Walk Out from Google in Protest of Sexual Harassment Misconduct

The world’s largest search engine, Google or Alphabet Inc., faced waves of stage walkout from its workers across the globe to protest the company’s misconduct toward sexual harassment cases, started in Asia and then Europe, North America. The last wave of protest was at Google’s headquarter in Mountain View, California.

 

The New York Times recently reported that Google had paid $90 million exit package in 2014 to Andy Rubin, the “father of android” who allegedly coerced sex another Google employee back in 2013.

Which led to a stir against Rich DeVaul, a top executive of Alphabet Inc., who was accused of sexual harassment and had left the company this Tuesday without severance pay. Even though the accusation happened in 2003, and was reported in 2005, DeVaul still maintained his position until the departure.

 

Many employees at the Mountain View walkout chanted “Women’s rights are workers rights,” while some chanted “Time’s up”.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, speaking an hour later at a New York Times conference in New York, said he was taking note of the “concrete steps” workers presented to improve the company’s culture and human resources processes.

“I want to make sure Google sets the bar,” he said, noting that a lack of gender and racial diversity was part of the issue. “We’re grappling with it, as with many places.”

 

The dissatisfaction among Alphabet’s 94,000 employees and tens of thousands contractors had not noticeably affected the company’s share price in NASDAQ. Alphabet shares closed down 0.4 percent to $1,085.98 on Thursday.

However, employees, who warned they would demonstrate again if needed, expected Alphabet to face recruiting and retention challenges if their concerns go unaddressed.