AFP•
San Francisco (AFP) - A Google worker who helped organize a massive walkout to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct said Friday she had quit her job.
In a post at Medium, Claire Stapleton said her decision to resign was based on her expecting another child but also because she was marked for retaliation by department heads after the walkout late last year.
"If I stayed, I didn't just worry that there'd be more public flogging, shunning, and stress, I expected it," Stapleton said.
"Life is extremely short and realistically we only have a couple of years left until the world hurtles into climate apocalypse or some other paroxysm of our own doing."
Google told AFP that it thoroughly investigated Stapleton's claims and found no evidence that she was targeted for retaliation in the workplace.
Stapleton's team was given a "Culture Award" by management for her role in the walkout, according to the California-based internet company.
"To reiterate, we don't tolerate retaliation," Google said in response to an AFP inquiry.
"Our employee relations team did a thorough investigation of her claims and found no evidence of retaliation."
Google employees poured out of buildings at the company's Mountain View campus in November, filling courtyards and patios in solidarity with co-workers who staged similar demonstrations at offices in countries around the world to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct
Stapleton was a co-organizer of the walkout, which lasted more than an hour.
The protest took shape after Google said that it had fired 48 employees in the prior two years -- including 13 senior executives -- as a result of allegations of sexual misconduct, citing "an increasingly hard line" on inappropriate conduct.
One senior Google employee, Android creator Andy Rubin, was reported to have received an exit package worth $90 million as he faced allegations of misconduct. Rubin has denied the allegations and claimed he was the victim of a "smear campaign."
The lawsuit alleging that Google discriminates against employees on the basis of political beliefs has passed a crucial test, allowing the plaintiffs to demand and receive internal documents, emails and text messages, and other records such as audio and video recordings related to their contention. Levi Sumagaysay of the San Jose Mercury-News reports:
A judge on Friday rejected Google's motions to throw out a lawsuit brought by fired engineer James Damore accusing the internet company of discrimination against conservatives, men and white people.
The ruling by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Brian Walsh means the case, which Damore exited late last year in favor of arbitration, can move forward into the discovery phase.
"This ruling is a significant step forward for all California workers, and sends notice to Silicon Valley that discrimination of any kind will not be escape legal scrutiny," lead plaintiffs' attorney Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement.
If you are not familiar with Harmeet Dhillon, she is one of my heroes, a conservative lawyer and political activist (RNC national committeewoman for California) who is smart and tough enough to take on the world's most powerful company and win.
Harmeet Dhillon Twitter
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The judge utterly vanquished Google's attempt to shit down the case:
The court denied three different Google motions to dismiss the lawsuit. Now the plaintiffs can request access to internal Google documents to try to support their allegations, which also include some people being "denied employment because of their actual and perceived conservative political activities and affiliations, and their status as actual or perceived Asian or Caucasian male job applicants," according to the lawsuit.
Allum Bokhari of Breitbart adds:
This is potentially a huge problem for the tech giant, as previous leaks of internal documents and video have repeatedly exposed the company's extreme political bias.
I strongly suspect that in internal conversations now subject to discovery, Google employees have expressed even more extreme views about conservatives than those in the video Bokhari links to. Those could be highly damaging.
It is important to note that James Damore, who first brought the class action lawsuit, has entered arbitration with Google and is no longer among the plaintiffs. But two other Google employees joined and remain in the class.
If you fear Google's stranglehold on access to information and its obvious political bias, than I urge you to contribute to the effort, as Harmeet Dhillon indicated is necessary:
Thanks @LibertarianBlue -- our firm has been fighting this battle on its own, with small contributions from individual supporters that have made it possible to get this far. But now that we are entering discovery, supporters may help us here: https://t.co/XyEhpUTvQf https://t.co/uB2sAGg2WU
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) June 7, 2019
I urge readers to donate to this case. Google's position as gatekeeper to information online, including YouTube, is scary, given its extreme leftist political bias.
GOOGLE FIRES REPUBLICAN ENGINEER WHO SPOKE OUT AGAINST 'OUTRAGE MOBS' (dailycaller.com)
by PassStage6 to technology (+154|-0)
Tim Pool: "I recently received an email leak that I believe shows how ( Google's ) activists working as journalists target their political rivals for deplatforming" (bitchute.com)
by noworldorder to videos (+137|-2)