James Damore, an engineer who was fired from Google for allegedly making comments about the company’s attitude towards gender and diversity, has filed a class action suit against it claiming the company discriminates against white men.
The complaints in the lawsuit range from harassment to discrimination in promotion.
Damore alleges in his lawsuit that he and fellow plaintiff were treated discriminately because they were white males, reported recode.net. They were “ostracized, belittled and punished” and other employees who share same views were “singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights,” alleges the lawsuit.
While conservative employees face discrimination, “to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees,” the company goes ahead with its plans to recruit more women and other workers from diverse backgrounds in an attempt to demean them.
According to reports, Damore has filed 100 pages of screenshots of internal communications and raised allegations against several employees in Google.
The lawsuit alleges Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Google, of wrongly considering “gender and racial preferences” when making promotions and “shaming” departments for lacking gender parity.
Damore further alleges that the human resource department of Google didn’t take any action even after having acknowledged the fact that conservative employees “did not feel included.” He decided to write the controversial memo, called “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” after realizing that there would be no action to address his concerns.
Employees supporting Donald Trump have suffered harassment and Google failed to protect them, said Demore in the complaint. He alleged that some managers maintain a blacklist of conservative employees to avoid working with them. The company has banned some of such employees from visiting the campus.
The lawsuit filed in a California court has once again led to a debate on gender disparity.
Demore filed the lawsuit four months after he was ousted from Google. The company hasn’t made any comment on the move of its former employee.