Google has once again been accused of discrimination and retaliation, and this time by a pregnant employee. The concerned employee sent a detailed internal memo, wherein she describes how her pregnancy resulted in her being discriminated against and how the HR is not doing enough to address incidents of discrimination and harassment by certain managers within the organisation.
With a very hard hitting title —‘I’m not returning to Google after maternity leave, and here’s why’— the memo has been read by over 10,000 staff members at Google in a week’s time. Memes in support of the sender of the memo and highlighting the HR’s inefficacy have also been doing the rounds.
Interestingly, the memo begins with the employee disapproving of the way her manager treated another mother and how it affected her performance. While the writer was assured by the HR that there would be no retaliation, the employee actually was at the receiving end of her manager’s ire in more ways than one. In fact, she was so stressed out that she had to change her team, which adversely affected her growth in the organisation as she was refused managerial responsibilities, despite being known for her high performance. She was also told to refrain from taking early maternity leave by another manager, when faced with health complications.
While HR did investigate the matter, they apparently found nothing amiss and no action was taken against the managers.
This is not the first time that Google managers have been accused of retaliation. Last November, when thousands of employees of Google across the globe walked out in protest of the inappropriate handling of sexual misconduct charges, the employees who organised the protest faced retaliation.
