WeWork is taking another hit and this time for good reason. According to the New York Post, the company is being sued by Ayesha Whyte, on the grounds of racial discrimination and gender bias.
Whyte left her high paying job at Disney and headed to WeWork in 2018 under the assumption that she would hold a director position with an annual salary of $200,000 at the company’s New York location.
She relocated her entire family, only to find out she would be working in Washington D.C. and for 20 percent less than promised.
If that wasn’t enough, it gets worse. According to the filed lawsuit paperwork, Whyte claims that her non-Black counterparts and men were making more than her all while less qualified employees got promotions ahead of her.
Whyte was fired on Oct. 27 for bringing the discrimination she faced to the surface. If she went against their wishes of private arbitration, the company threatened to come after her with legal fees.
“WeWork keeps people of color out of leadership positions and under-compensated. At the same time, WeWork is all too happy to use images of these same people to promote its facade of real diversity,” Whyte’s legal documents state.
Whyte feels her story is not singular, but instead a more general and continuous method used by WeWork.
The New York Post reports that Whyte claims racial discriminatory culture came from the top with court documents stating that WeWork co-president told the diversity team she “can’t empathize with black people.”
However, a spokesperson said the opposite in a statement: “At WeWork, we prioritize equal employment opportunity, including hiring, promotion and compensation, and believe these claims are wholly without merit.”
