- Tim Chevalier is suing the tech giant over his termination by what he claimed was caused by his defense against discrimination occurring in the workplace.
- He alleged that his termination was caused by his defense for women, people of color, and co-workers who were members of the LGBT community during discussions on the company’s message board.
- The lawsuit brought about questions regarding Google’s workplace culture, particularly its drive for diversity.
An ex-employee is suing the tech giant over his termination by what he claimed was caused by his defense against discrimination occurring in the workplace.
According to transgender news posted by Newsweek on February 22, Tim Chevalier said that he was fired from his job as a Google engineer because he stood up against bigotry in the workplace that included gender discrimination, racism, and white supremacy.
Workplace discrimination
Chevalier, who identified as disabled and transgender, filed the suit at the San Francisco Superior Court on February 21, Wednesday.
Working as a reliability engineer at Google, his employment was terminated by the company last November, 2017. He alleged that his termination was caused by his defense for women, people of color, and co-workers who were members of the LGBT community during discussions on the company’s message board.
He claimed he was fired so that the company could avoid dealing with discrimination and harassment occurring in the workplace.
One particular incident took place in a discussion regarding hiring people of color. In May 2016, an employee asked whether the company hired fewer Latino and African American workers and whether that would mean they were not as good. The inquiry met responses on the company’s message board, implying that in order for Google to hire more people from the minorities, it has to lower its standards in hiring.
“In a culture where it’s common to respond to diversity initiatives with ‘we can’t lower the bar,’ implying a baseline assumption that women, non-binary people, and men of color are incompetent, it’s equally important that we don’t do the reverse: that we don’t insist on white male competence even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary,” he wrote.
Diversity in Google
This new development brought about questions regarding Google’s workplace culture, particularly its drive for diversity. This was not the first time the company was sued by an employee espousing a specific set of beliefs.
Last year, engineer James Damore was let go because of his comments regarding women. He wrote in a memo that detailed how women were biologically different from men, which led him to believe that Google’s practice of hiring women, a practice aimed at bolstering diversity, were misguided.
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