Google gives Black workers lower-level jobs and pays them less, suit claims

A lawsuit filed on Friday accuses Google of systemic racial bias against Black employees, saying the company steers them to lower-level jobs, pays them less and denies them opportunities to advance because of their race.

The plaintiff, April Curley, also said the Alphabet Inc unit subjected Black employees to a hostile work environment, including by often requiring they show identification or be questioned by security at its Mountain View, California, campus.

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The complaint was filed in the federal court in San Jose, California.

Curley said Google had hired her in 2014 to design an outreach program to historically Black colleges.

Curley said Google had fired her in September 2020 after she and her colleagues began working on a list of desired reforms.

Curley is not the first Black employee to accuse Google of discrimination or who has shared experiences of discrimination at the company. Lesley Miley, a former engineering director at the company, has said he has been physically stopped by co-workers as he was entering a Google office on two occasions despite wearing his employee badge as is required. Miley and others said they had told higher-ups and executives about the issues with deputizing employees to police who does and does not belong in Google offices.

Many Black and Latino people still feel excluded from the tech industry as a whole, attributing that to both a lack of access and internal support.

Crump is a civil rights lawyer who represented the family of George Floyd after he was murdered in May 2020 by the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.