Google employees demand of CEO Sundar Pichai to put a stop to protection of harassers at Google

Over 500 Google employees have signed an open letter to the chief executive of Alphabet and GoogleSundarPichai, requesting that the organisation stop defending harassers and provide a safer working atmosphere for its employees.

The open letter which was published on the platform of Medium read as, "This is a long pattern where Alphabet protects the harasser instead of protecting the person harmed by the harassment. The person who reports harassment is forced to bear the burden, usually leaving Alphabet while their harasser stays or is rewarded for their behaviour.”

The letter has been written against the backdrop of Emi Nietfeld, an ex - Google engineer, who got an opinion piece published in The New York Times claiming that she was pressured to conduct meetings with her harasser one-on-one.

In her piece Nietfeld wrote, “Every time I asked for an update on the timeline and expressed my discomfort at having to continue to work in proximity to my harasser, the investigators said that I could seek counseling, work from home or go on leave. I later learned that Google had similar responses to other employees who reported racism or sexism.”

In the year of 2018 over 20,000 Google workers had demonstrated against sexual harassment cases and the company's protection of harassers. However, the new open letter shows that the organisation has not changed its operations and has not complied with any of the requests made by the Google Walkout. Employees requested that the corporation prioritise the wellbeing of their employees above the interests of those who had been abused.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the company is "deeply aware of the importance of this issue," and that Google works to help and protect workers who raise complaints, examines these concerns, and takes action against "substantiated allegations."

The Goggle statement read as, "We've made significant improvements to our overall process, including the way we handle and investigate employee concerns, and introducing new care programs for employees who report concerns."