Google has been accused of hostile and discriminatory workplace practices

*Paromita Das
The Washington Post says, Google was accused of hostile and casteist workplace practices after canceling a talk by a Dalit rights activist for Google News employees.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a Dalit rights activist based in the United States and the founder and executive director of Equality Labs, a nonprofit that advocates for Dalits, was scheduled to speak to Google News employees in honor of Dalit History Month, the of April. However, it was canceled after some employees expressed their concerns, according to the report.
According to the report, some employees then began spreading misinformation about the activist, labelling her “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu” in emails to company leaders, citing Google’s intranet and mailing lists as well as current Google employees.

Soundararajan then pleaded with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to allow her presentation to continue, but her request was denied. According to the report, this led some employees to believe that Google was purposefully ignoring caste bias.

“During this time, opponents of caste equity internally disseminated false information about Soundararajan and Equality Labs in order to derail the civil rights event until its eventual cancellation,” Equality Labs said in a statement.
“The movement for caste equity is based on love, empathy, and justice,” Soundararajan said.

“I am at a loss for words to express how traumatic and discriminatory Google’s actions were toward its employees and myself, as the company illegally cancelled a talk about caste equity.” “Google must address the workplace casteism that allows these attacks to occur and continue,” she said.

She also slammed Pichai and demanded an explanation from the Google CEO about the controversy.
“He is Indian, Brahmin, and grew up in Tamil Nadu.” “There is no way you can grow up in Tamil Nadu and not be aware of caste politics,” Soundararajan told The Washington Post.
Google, on the other hand, has denied these allegations.

“There is no place for racial discrimination in our workplace.” “We also have a very clear, publicly shared policy in our workplace against retaliation and discrimination,” Google spokesperson Shannon Newberry told The Washington Post.

Following the incident, Tanuja Gupta, the senior Google News executive who invited Soundararajan to speak, resigned over the incident, according to a copy of her farewell email published internally on Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post.

Gupta stated in her resignation email to over 15,000 recipients on June 1, 2022, “Having been at the company for 11 years, I had many reasons for leaving, but this was the only one I needed. I witnessed four women of colour harassed and silenced while doing my job and promoting caste equity at the company.”

“The reality is that these are not isolated incidents; they are part of a pattern.”