About two months ago, former Google engineer James Damore made headlines after filing a lawsuit against the huge tech company, for allegedly discriminating against white male conservatives. Now, a similar suit has been filed; this time by a YouTube recruiter, according to Biz Journal.
Arne Wilberg is suing Google’s sister company, claiming that he was explicitly told not to hire white and Asian men.
The suit alleges Wilberg’s team was instructed to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline,” according to the Verge.
Wilberg claims that his manager sent the team an email that stated, “please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups.”
Wilberg, who recruited engineers for Google and YouTube’s parent company Alphabet, said he was fired after he made a complaint to upper management about the discriminatory hiring practices; he alleges that other colleagues who complained were either disregarded, transferred or demoted.
According to Wilberg, executives were also tone-deaf when it came to interacting with recruiters of color. He claims one co-worker “complained that managers were speaking about blacks like they were objects,” during conversations about an initiative called “Project Mirror,” which was a program where recruiters interviewed potential hires of their same race or gender.
To help prove his allegations, Wilberg included a screenshot of a Google tracking system — which was subsequently deleted — that kept track of candidates’ gender and race, pointing out that the company had not reached their goals in hiring female, black and Latinx candidates.
Alphabet has refuted Wilberg’s allegations.
“We have a clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity,” a Google spokesperson said. “At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.”
