Google employees are calling for reforms at the company.
Bloomberg reports in a resolution delivered to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, employees and shareholders demand the company address issues of racial and gender diversity and tie these metrics to executive bonuses.
“We believe executives are out to lunch on several key social risks facing the company,” Pat Tomaino, director of socially responsible investing for Zevin Asset Management LLC told Bloomberg.
“It’s a picture of unmanaged risk,” said Tomaino, whose firm, a Google shareholder, is the lead filer of the proposal.
Last November, Google employees staged a protest over the company’s handling of sexual harassment cases. Mass walkouts occurred all over the world in response to a New York Times article detailing how the tech giant paid millions of dollars in exit packages to executives accused of sexual misconduct.
“If shareholders say that this is something that is a priority, it’s signaling to the company that they have to take action,” Maria Noel Fernandez, campaign director of Silicon Valley Rising, said to Bloomberg. “They can no longer just wait and see and just take small steps.”
Google’s latest diversity report shows the company is 2.5 percent Black and 3.6 percent Latinx. The report notes that the percentage of Black and Latinx employees has only increased 0.1 percentage point since 2017.
