Ex-Google employee accuses firm of racial bias

A former Google staffer has claimed that the company systematically discriminates against Black employees by assigning them to lower-level positions, paying them less, and denying them growth opportunities.

As reported by Reuters, the plaintiff filed their case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose on Friday, and seeks class action status.

April Curley, an African-American woman, is the plaintiff. She was employed at Google from 2014 until being terminated in 2020.

While working at Google, Ms Curley says she helped bring Black employees to the company by designing programmes to recruit from historically Black colleges and universities.

She claims, however, that her employment turned out to be a marketing gimmick, as her bosses started to disparage her work, categorising her as an "angry" Black woman, and passed her over for promotions.

The lawsuit alleges that employees of colour at Google experience a hostile work environment and are subjected to retaliation should they dare to oppose the company's discriminatory policies.

It also claims that Black professionals and visitors to Google's main California campus headquarters were frequently harassed and targeted on the basis of their race, with many of them questioned by security or required to provide identification.

The suit claims that Google maintains a "racially biased corporate culture" that favours white men, with Black people accounting just over four per cent of its workers and only three per cent of its leadership and technology workforce.

"Google's centralised leadership, which is nearly devoid of Black representation, holds biased and stereotypical views about the abilities and potential of Black professionals," Curley said in her complaint.

In a statement to Reuters Curley's lawyer, Ben Crump, said that while Google claims to be working to increase diversity, it is actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating Black employees.

Crump is a civil rights attorney who also represented the family of George Floyd after he was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.

Curley's lawsuit seeks to recover compensatory punitive damages and lost pay for current and former Black employees at Google, and to ensure that current and former Black employees get the jobs and seniority they deserve.

The lawsuit comes months after it was reported in December that California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing was looking into how Google treats Black women workers.

Curley is not the first Black employee to make similar allegations against Google.

In 2019, former engineering director Lesley Miley said he was physically stopped by co-workers on two occasions when he was entering a Google office, despite wearing his employee badge.

"I will always get challenged because people look at me and think of me as a threat," Miley said at the Tech Inclusion 2019 conference in San Francisco.

"If I just dressed up like a food service worker, people would open the door for me. If I dressed up as a janitor, people would hold the door for me. Because no one would question if I was a food service worker or a janitor who is coming to serve them food or clean their office."

Last year, a lawsuit female employees filed against Google in 2017 over pay parity was granted class-action status.