Uber really cannot seem to put a foot right at the moment. In December the worldwide ride-sharing company came under fire after it emerged Uber drivers can spy on its users, due to poor internal security. Just over a month later, the company's CEO Travis Kalanick was forced to step down from Trump’s economic advisory council, following the immense outrage his post caused. It's possible that he had no choice but to step down because Uber lost 200,000 users and most importantly, their money, amid this backlash. This storm only intensified when Kalanick remained reticent over Trump’s so-called Muslim Ban, which caused #Deleteuber to begin trending furiously on social media channels. Now, just a couple weeks later, #deleteuber is trending again amid fresh sexual harassment allegations the company is facing and Kalanick has been prompted to order an 'urgent' investigation into these disturbing claims.
Former Uber engineer, Susan Fowler, has written a 3,000 word blog post claiming that she had astonishing levels of sexism directed at her after she joined the company in 2015. In ‘Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber’ Fowler alleges that one such incidents occurred on her very first day, 'On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with.’ Fowler claims 'it was clear' her manager hoped she would satisfy this desire. She was so troubled by these messages she immediately took screenshots and reported her manager to HR.
She continues, 'when I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to. Upper management told me that he was a "high performer" and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.'
Eventually, Fowler says she was offered two options - she could either work in another team, or remain where she was, 'but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when the time came around and there was nothing they could do about that.'
Fowler also claims that her Uber department was 25% female when she first joined and had dwindled to less than 6% female when she was attempting to transfer. When she quizzed a director about the rapidly declining number of female employees, she claims that he told her 'women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers'.
In this end Fowler quit, after apparently following up this complaint with HR, being cautioned that she was on 'thin ice' and told she was in danger of being fired.
In response, Kalanick branded Fowler's claims 'abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in.'
'It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new chief human resources officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations,' he added.
'We seek to make Uber a just workplace FOR EVERYONE 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.'
However, it's worth nothing Kalanick has previously made sexist remarks in GQ when he made a joke to a reporter about 'women on demand', adding 'we call that Boob-er.' A study reveals a staggering 60% of women in the Silicon Valley experience harassment. Clearly something needs to change, and fast.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.