A former Uber engineer sued the ride hailing service Monday, alleging sexual harassment, gender and race discrimination, and retaliation against her when she tried to report her experiences to HR.Ingrid Avendaño, who is Latina, says she was hired at Uber in 2014 and spent years dealing with Uber’s “male-dominated work culture, permeated with degrading, marginalizing, discriminatory, and sexually harassing conduct towards women,” according to a lawsuit she filed in California court and obtained by Recode.Her lawsuit details several allegations of sexual misconduct, including:Uber settled that lawsuit for $10 million in March.Avendaño’s new lawsuit, and Uber’s plans to handle it, will be a test of Uber’s much-ballyhooed commitment to crafting a more equitable company culture. In an ad released earlier this month, Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi — who took over the company nine months ago, after former CEO Travis Kalanick was effectively forced to resign — promised to “move in a new direction.”“One of our core values as a company is to always do the right thing,” Khosrowshahi said in the ad. “And if there are times when we fall short we commit to being open taking responsibility for the problem and fixing it.”An Uber spokesperson echoed Khosrowshahi in an emailed statement to VICE News, saying that the company was “moving in a new direction.”“Last week, we proactively announced changes to our arbitration policies,” the spokesperson said, referring to Uber’s announcement that it would no longer make Uber riders, drivers, or employees deal with sexual assault or harassment claims through arbitration. “And in the past year we have implemented a new salary and equity structure based on the market, overhauled our performance review process, published Diversity and Inclusion reports, and created and delivered diversity and leadership trainings to thousands of employees globally.”Cover image:Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Advertisement
A male coworker who repeatedly remarked, “Uber is the type of company where women can sleep their way to the top.” That same coworker also told multiple engineering teams that Avendaño only had a job at Uber because she’d slept with someone at the company.
A senior coworker drunkenly touched Avendaño’s upper thigh on a company retreat. He later told Avendaño that he wanted to “take [her] home.”
One male manager used Uber’s internal instant messenger to organize an outing to a strip club, talked about his “open relationship” with his partner, and discussed sleeping with underage girls.
Advertisement