Uber’s CEO Orders Investigation After Company Sexual Harassment Allegations

Former Uber employee Susan Fowler, published an online account on her blog that reveals Uber partook in sexual harassment and gender bias during her time at the company.

Fowler joined Uber in November 2015 and claimed that during her employment, Uber managers and human resource representatives acted very poorly.

Her blog entry included these allegations:

“On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn’t. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn’t help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with.”

“It was clear that [my new manager] was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.”

“Upper management told me that [that manager] ‘was a high performer’ (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn’t feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.”

Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick said Sunday that he was ordering an investigation after the allegations.

Travis Kalanick issued this statement:

“I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber — and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.”