Loading...
Summary: Youtube is being sued for reverse discrimination.
A former employee at Youtube is suing the media giant and its parent company for allegedly refusing to hire white and Asian men for technical positions. According to the Wall Street Journal, the tech firm set quotas for diversity that resulted in discrimination of the two groups.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is former Google employee Arne Wilberg, who worked for Youtube’s parent company for nine years and as a human resources recruiter for Youtube for four years. Wilberg is Caucasian.
In his lawsuit, Wilberg said that Youtube set diversity quotas, and he was told to ignore applicants who were not female or from underrepresented racial groups (black and Latino). He was also told to cancel interviews of men who were white or Asian.
The Wall Street Journal said that Wilberg’s coworkers corroborated his story and said that Youtube’s hiring initiatives were minority quota based and that some recruiters complained that this practice was unfair. Those who spoke up allegedly experienced negative consequences.
Get JD Journal in Your Mail
Subscribe to our FREE daily news alerts and get the latest updates on the most happening events in the legal, business, and celebrity world. You also get your daily dose of humor and entertainment!!
Recruiters at Youtube allegedly had a “diversity tracker” and were given yearly diversity hiring goals. Wilberg refused to follow these policies, and he said that as a result, he was given negative performance evaluations. He was eventually fired in November of 2017.
Wilberg’s lawsuit targets Youtube, Google, and 25 Google employees.
Wilberg is not the only white male tech employee who has publicly bashed Google’s penchant to diversify. Last year, Google engineer James Damore was fired because he wrote a memo that was widely circulated amongst employees that conservative white men were “ostracized” in favor of minorities and women.
After Damore was terminated, he and another white engineer filed a discrimination lawsuit against his former employer.
“Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males,” Damore’s lawsuit said.
In Damore’s manifesto that was circulated last summer, he claimed that women were biologically inferior to their male counterparts, amongst other controversial statements. In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai condemned his views.
“To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” Pichai said.
Replying to Wilberg’s lawsuit, Google told the Wall Street Journal that they hire based on merit.
“We have a clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity,” a Google spokesperson said to The Wall Street Journal. “At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.”
According to the Verge, Google’s workforce is currently 69% male and 91% white or Asian.
- Manifesto Writer Sues Youtube for Discrimination Against Conservative White Men
- Is Google Discriminating Against Employees for Their Political Ideologies?
