Uber CEO Takes Leave of Absence Amid Scandal

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is taking an indefinite leave of absence amid a scandal over sexual harassment.  Billionaire David Bonderman also resigned from Uber’s board, after making disparaging comments about women at a board meeting intended to address sexual harassment in the workplace.  Uber has fired more than 20 employees as part of its own internal probe into what multiple sources have described as a culture of sexism.

The fallout continues four months after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler came forward with allegations that Uber’s human-resources team systematically ignored her reports of sexual harassment during the year she worked for the company.  Fowler detailed her year working for Uber in a February 2017 blog post which went viral and kicked off an internal investigation into her claims of sexual harassment.

Fowler claimed that just days after completing her training, she was clearly propositioned for sex by her new manager over a string of messages over company chat.  She immediately took screenshots of the messages and sent them to Human Resources.  She was told by the HR Team that the manager in question would receive only a verbal reprimand since it was his first offense.  She was then given the option of leaving the team which would give her no contact with the manager in question or stay on the team knowing that he could give her a poor performance review.  She was told a negative review would not be considered retaliation because she had the option to leave.

Fowler left the team and while working with other female engineers within the company, learned that the manager had been reported for inappropriate behavior by multiple women prior to her interaction with him.  She claims that despite having a perfect performance score, a request for transfer was blocked and the reasoning was “undocumented performance problems”.  Her blog post also revealed instances of blatant sexism, the dwindling number of female engineers still with the company and chaotic political games within upper management as well.

CEO Travis Kalanick sent a company-wide email the day after the blog post which addressed the allegations published the day before.   The company launched two internal investigations, hiring the law firm Perkins Coie to investigate Fowler’s claims – which resulted in the firing of 20 people after investigating 215 reported claims of discrimination and harassment, among other issues.  The company then brought on former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran, both partners at law firm Covington & Burling, to conduct a separate investigation into Uber’s overall culture.

At the end of May, Uber received Eric Holder’s recommendations for change.  The board met for more than six hours Holder presented the findings of his firm’s report. A representative for Uber’s board said it voted unanimously in favor of adopting all of Holder’s recommendations.