A former Google employee has sued the tech giant claiming he was fired after he rejected a woman boss’s alleged advances at company dinner.
The alleged incident took place in December 2019 during a work dinner at a Manhattan restaurant, the lawsuit says.
The former employee says he is a victim of "sexual harassment, gender discrimination, race discrimination, and retaliation”, Sun reported.
The man was a senior executive in the food, beverages, and restaurants division while the woman was senior to him, with a top role at Google’s programmatic media for consumer, government and entertainment.
The woman’s behaviour made him “extremely uncomfortable, and he immediately removed himself from the situation”, the suit says.
The ex Google worker alleges that the company’s human resources department did not take action after he complained about the alleged incident.
"If the complaint was 'in reverse' — a female accusing a white male of harassment — (it) would certainly be escalated," he was told, according to his lawsuit.
The man was eventually fired from his job at Google in August last year "because he was not 'inclusive'", the suit says
The woman employee denied her former colleague’s allegations, terming them “a fictional account”.
“This lawsuit is a fictional account of events filled with numerous falsehoods, fabricated by a disgruntled ex-employee, who was senior to (name withheld) at Google,” the spokesperson told the New York Post.
Earlier this month, Google parent Alphabet cut roughly 12,000 jobs or 6 per cent of its global workforce worldwide amid mass layoffs across major tech companies. This is the largest round of layoffs in the company’s 25-year history.
CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in an e-mail communication that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here” and added that the tech giant will "support employees as they look for their next opportunity.
