According to a complaint seeking class-action status, Google
maintains a "racially biased corporate culture" that favours white
men, where Black people comprise only 4.4 percent of employees and about 3
percent of leadership and its technology workforce.
The plaintiff, April Curley, also said the Alphabet unit
subjected Blacks to a hostile work environment, including by often requiring
they show identification or be questioned by security at its Mountain View,
California campus.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The complaint was filed in the federal court in San Jose,
California.
It came after that state's civil rights regulator, the
Department of Fair Employment and Housing, began investigating Google's
treatment of Black female workers and possible discrimination in their
workplace.
Curley said Google hired her in 2014 to design an outreach
program to historically Black colleges.
She said her hiring proved to be a "marketing
ploy," as supervisors began denigrating her work, stereotyping her as an
"angry" Black woman and passing her over for promotions.
Curley said Google fired her in September 2020 after she and
her colleagues began working on a list of desired reforms.
"While Google claims that they were looking to increase
diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their
Black employees," Curley's lawyer Ben Crump said in a statement.
Crump is a civil rights lawyer who also represented the
family of George Floyd after he was killed in May 2020 by former Minneapolis
police officer Derek Chauvin.
Curley's lawsuit seeks to recoup compensatory and punitive
damages and lost compensation for current and former Black employees at Google,
and to restore them to their appropriate positions and seniority.
The case is Curley v Google LLC, US District Court, Northern
District of California, No. 22-01735. © Reuters