Uber’s sexual harassment scandal continues, as its SVP of engineering, Amit Singhal, was asked to resign by CEO Travis Kalanick after he failed to disclose he left Google over a sexual harassment claim, Recode reports.
Singhal left Google in February 2016 after top executives told him of a sexual allegation from an employee claim was found “credible” after an internal investigation. Uber sources told Recode the company did extensive background checks of Singhal but did not know the real reason why he left Google.
Singhal reportedly disputed the claims to Google at the time, including with CEO Sundar Pichai and Google HR head Laszlo Bock, stating that there were two sides to every story. However, after the winter holidays he left Google after spending 15 years at the company.
The female employee who filed the formal complaint against Singhal did not work for him directly but did work closely with the research team, according to Recode. Since she didn’t want to go public with the charges, Google decided to allow Singhal to quietly leave the company, even writing a goodbye letter which gave no hints of what was actually going on.
The revelation of the sexual harassment claim against Singhal during his time at Google comes as Uber is entangled in sexual abuse and sexism accusations.
Recently, a former Uber employee Susan Fowler, made claims about sexual harassment and lack of female workers at the company in a blog post. The company hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to carry out an internal investigation over the matter. Huffington Post’s co-founder Arianna Huffington, who is on Uber’s board of directors, will join Holder in the probe.
After the blog was posted, a recording of a meeting Kalanick and a group of more than 100 female engineers discussing the issues was revealed by BuzzFeed. During the meeting, women at Uber described the “systemic problem” at the company and urged Kalanick to start “listening to your own people.”
Separately, a New York Times report released last week, titled Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture, brought the company’s work environment into light. The report, based on interviews with more than 30 former and current employees at Uber, detailed instances of cocaine use, homophobic verbal abuse, sexual harassment and even an incident in which a manager threatened to beat an employee’s head with a baseball bat. The ride-hailing company is facing three lawsuits in at least two countries from former employees with claims of sexual harassment or verbal abuse actions from managers, the report found.
On top of the sexual abuse allegations, the company is also still reeling back from last month’s #DeleteUber campaign.
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