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About 200 Google employees would plan to leave the office building en masse on Thursday, reports Buzzfeed News. By doing so, they would like to protest against the Internet giant’s dealings with top people who have been accused of sexual misconduct.

The New York Times revealed last week that Google Android founder Andy Rubin gave $90 million, even though he was accused of sexual misconduct. A woman accused him of forcing her into oral sex. The internet giant found the accusation credible and asked Rubin to leave. But the incident – like other incidents of sexual misconduct by top people – was kept under the hat.

CEO Sundar Pichai and vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton subsequently admitted in a memo that 48 people had been dismissed for sexual misconduct over the past two years. Thirteen of them were top people in management or a higher position.

Rubin left Google in 2014, but no details were disclosed about his departure. Rubin then founded Essential, but after stories of sexual misconduct he decided to take leave of his company to “deal with personal affairs”.

Demonstration

“Personally, I’m furious,” says a Google employee. “I feel like there’s a pattern of powerful men getting away with scandalous behaviour towards women at Google, or if they don’t get away with it, they get a tap on the fingers or are sent away with a lot of money, like Andy Rubin. And it is a leadership of mainly men who make decisions about what consequences are or are not given.”

On Thursday, top people from the Internet giant held a meeting with all employees in which they tried to explain their treatment of Rubin. They also apologized. But during the weekend a message was posted suggesting that employees would organize a so-called walkout. Monday morning the message had hundreds of upvotes.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.