After the #MeToo movement swept through Hollywood, it
eventually made its way to Silicon Valley.
But more than a year after thousands of Google employees
walked out of the job in protest, what kind of change has actually
taken place?
And has it been lasting change?
-Google employees around the world staging a walkout Thursday
to protest a workplace culture they say has turned a blind eye to
sexual harassment and discrimination.
-The Google walkout was 20,000 workers all leaving their desks
one day because they were frustrated by the level of sexual
harassment, discrimination and inequity in the workplace, and it
was a way to say to our company, we don't accept this anymore.
The walkout was organized just days after news came out of
sexual misconduct at the company.
-Google paid millions of dollars in exit packages to Andy Rubin and
other male executives accused of misconduct.
-And it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back
at that point.
It had been building.
I think if you were outside our company, it may have felt sudden.
But if you were inside the company, it felt like it had been
growing and growing.
Tons of experiences of women and men
led to that walkout: facing discrimination, microaggressions,
workplace harassments.
And time is literally up.
Enough is enough. We have to fight this.
They pushed Google to address sexual harassment as well as pay
disparities and a lack of opportunity based on
gender and race.
And they also wanted to end forced arbitration — it’s a policy
that usually takes up a sentence or two in employee contracts, but
essentially prevents workers from taking their companies to court.
-Who’s picking the arbitrator?
Who’s paying the arbitrator?
What types of claims are you allowed to
seek out an arbitration for?
All of that is set by one party, not the employee.
If we want to address any kind of workplace harassment
or discrimination or wrongful termination or wage theft, you
have to know the scope of the problem.
And with forced arbitration, you don’t know that.
You don’t know how many people are actually affected because the
data isn’t public.
A week after the walkout, Google announced it would end forced
arbitration, but only in cases of sexual assault and harassment.
A few months later, they expanded
the policy to all workplace issues.
-What they didn’t do was tell their suppliers to end forced arbitration
for their workers.
Over 54 percent of the people that work for Google
are temporary workers or vendors or contractors.
So we’re still fighting for them.
When Google announced the small changes with arbitration as
a response to address a number of issues, we took it as a sign of
how long this fight would be.
Here’s what's still on the table.
Here's why it’s still important.
Don’t lose that anger because we need to keep fighting.
More than a year after the walkout, many workers are still
waiting for more transparency and accountability.
Google denies it pays women less, but the
Department of Labor is investigating whether there’s
been systemic discrimination.
-You don’t get to say, I promise I won’t harass you, but I’m still
going to pay you terribly.
I am still being discriminated against in that case.
We’re fighting for equality for workers, and that means you
need access to all your rights, not just the ones that get
cherry-picked by a company.
Of the seven workers who organized the walkout, four are no
longer at the company, and some of them claimed
they faced retaliation.
Gupta has remained at Google and has focused her efforts on
advocating for legislation to change the laws
around forced arbitration.
California recently passed a law to prevent
companies from forcing employees to sign arbitration
clauses, but business groups have challenged it.
-I’m sure anybody who’s thinking about discrimination and
harassment in the workplace, on some days they’re going to feel
like we’ve made great strides, and other days you’ll feel like we’re nowhere.
I think as a whole, like, even though you kind of keep
cycling, we have moved the ball, thanks to the hard work of people
that have come before us.
But we still have a long way to go.
You don’t get to just walk out for an hour
and expect everything to change.
You have to continue fighting, and chip away at the problem.