Former Google Employee Claims He Was Sacked For Speaking About Diversity

Earlier, Google fired an employee for speaking against diversity

By: Shweta Ganjoo |
February 22, 2018 8:09 pm

Recently, Google was hit by a revised gender-pay class action lawsuit which alleged that the company had underpaid its women employees in comparison with its male employees. And now the tech giant is in trouble again. This time for allegedly firing an employee who called out to racist and sexist posts circulating within the company. Tim Chevalier, who was fired from his role as a reliability engineer in November last year, has filed a lawsuit against the company for discrimination, retaliation, harassment and wrongful termination.

In his complaint, Chevalier, who happens to be transgender and differently-abled, has alleged that the company failed to protect its female, LGBTQ and minority employees from harassment on its internal forums, Gizmodo reported.

Notably, Chevalier’s posts have been mentioned in James Damore’s lawsuit against Google, in which the former engineer sued the company for discriminating against conservative white men. In his complaint, Damore went to say that Google punished its conservative employees by letting liberals speak without any punishment, The Verge noted. But, Chevalier in his lawsuit, has alleged that his firing was indeed a form of punishment.

However, this is not the first incident when a tech giant has faced allegations of discrimination.

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Last year, a former Tesla engineer AJ Vandermeyden accused the car-maker of ignoring her complaints of sexual harassment and of gender-based pay discrimination. In her lawsuit, Vandermeyden also accused the company of retaliating against her for speaking up.

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Responding to the allegations, Tesla told The Guardian that they thoroughly investigated her allegations with the help of a third-party expert. She was fired when her complaints were found baseless. “Somebody is trying to instill in employees that when they speak out about matters they are legally allowed to speak out about, they too will be fired,” Vandermeyden’s lawyer Therese Lawless told the English daily in response to the company’s statement.