Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Calls for Company Sexual Harassment Investigation

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Summary: More angry users are calling for a boycott of Uber after allegations of sexual harassment emerged on a former employee’s blog.

The technology industry has a reputation for being a boys’ club, and one of its biggest corporations is now under fire for allowing an alleged hostile work environment to exist for its female engineers.

  

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It’s only been less than two months into the new year, and the lawsuit-prone Uber is already receiving bad press. In late January, thousands urged that people “#deleteuber” in protest of the company’s CEO’s relationship to President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order to ban travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick responded to the hashtag campaign by removing himself from Trump’s advisory board, but now users are calling for #deleteuber to be revitalized after allegations of rampant sexual harassment were published on a former engineer’s blog on Sunday.

Susan J. Fowler worked at Uber for about a year before she moved on to payment company, Stripe. In a Sunday blog post, she stated that she was sexually harassed and that her complaints were ignored.

Fowler alleged in her post that when she joined Uber, her boss sent her several sexy messages over the company’s chat function. She said that she took screenshots and sent them to human resources. HR’s alleged response was appalling. According to Fowler, they told her that the messages were the boss’ first offense, and they did not feel comfortable giving him anything more than a warning and a stern talk.

Fowler said she then transferred teams, where she met other female employees who had similar experiences of reporting sexual harassment only to be given a lackluster course of inaction.

Kalanick has already issued a statement about the blog post titled“Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber.” He condemned the behavior described and called for a company investigation, which will be run by a human resources executive who was not present during Fowler’s time at Uber.

“I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in,” Kalanick said. “We seek to make Uber a just workplace and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber — and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.”

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• Related: Uber’s $100M Settlement Rejected

Source: IB Times

Photo courtesy of Fayer Wayer

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