Google is accused of having a systemic bias towards Black employees

Google is accused of having a systemic bias towards Black employees.

A complaint filed on Friday accuses Google of racial discrimination against Black employees, alleging that the search engine business directs them to lower-level employment, pays them less, and denies them advancement prospects because of their color.

According to a complaint seeking class-action status, Google has a “racially biassed company culture” that favors white men. Black individuals account for only 4.4 percent of employees and around 3% of leadership and technology.

April Curley, the plaintiff, also claimed that the Alphabet Inc company created a hostile work environment for Black employees by frequently requesting them to present identification or be questioned by security at its Mountain View, California headquarters.

Requests for a response from Google were not immediately returned. In federal court in San Jose, California, the complaint was filed.

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It came after the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the state’s civil rights regulator, began looking into Google’s treatment of Black female employees and suspected employment discrimination. find out more

According to Curley, Google hired Curley in 2014 to establish an outreach program for historically Black colleges.

Supervisors began disparaging her work, categorizing her as an “angry” Black woman, and passed her up for promotions, she claimed, proving her hiring to be a “marketing ploy.”

Curley claimed Google fired her in September 2020 after she and her coworkers started working on a list of needed revisions.

“While Google professes to be working to enhance diversity, their Black employees were being undervalued, underpaid, and mistreated,” Curley’s lawyer Ben Crump said.

Crump is a civil rights attorney who also represented George Floyd’s family when former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin slew him in May 2020.

Curley’s lawsuit aims to recoup compensatory and punitive damages, as well as lost wages, for present and former Black Google employees, as well as to reinstate them to their proper positions and seniority.

Curley v Google LLC, No. 22-01735, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.