Ex-Uber employee blows the lid on sexism -Charles White

This former employee left the company after being harassed (Pictures: Twiitter/susanthesquark)

Uber is facing criticism after a blog post from a former employee went viral on Twitter.
Susan Fowler Rigetti, a former site reliability engineer, detailed how she suffered under a sexist boss and an HR department that did not take appropriate action.
She left the company in December and wrote the post last month, it has since been liked 20,000 times on social media.
In the post she writes: ‘I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird. On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat.’
Susan has said that the messages said her manager was ‘trying to get me to have sex with him.’

Uber has a history with sexism accusations (Pictures: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But the post also details that the company did not discipline and even threatened her with dismissal after she reported continued harassment.
Uber has vowed to investigate.
The company has battled accusations that could amount to sexism, including accounts of drivers stalking women passengers and ‘less than comforting’ responses from Uber when reported.
The blog claims that while she was there the female workforce fell from 25% to less than 6% of the total employees.
Susan alleged that the company refused to move the manager because it was a first offence and he was a high performer for the group.
She wrote: ‘Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behaviour, and those who reported him were told it was still his “first offence”. The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.’

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has pledged to investigate the claims (Picture: REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui)

Uber’s HR then reportedly tried to blame the situation on Susan and tried to threaten her with dismissal.
When she reported that to senior workers she was told that the threatening manager was a ‘high performer’ and no action was taken.

Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber said: ‘I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is 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.

Susan noticed female workforce fell from 25% to 6% while she was there (Picture: Shutterstock)

‘We seek to make Uber a just workplace 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.’
Arianna Huffington, who is on Uber’s wrote on Twitter: ‘Just talked with Travis & as a representative of Uber’s Board I will work with Liane to conduct a full independent investigation starting now.’
She even shared her personal email address on the site so she could speak with Susan Fowler Rigetti directly.

Culled from Metro UK