Uber dismisses over 20 employees after law firm’s probe

SAN FRANCISCO – Uber has fired 20 employees after a company investigation into sexual harassment claims, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

The law firm Perkins Coie, which was hired to assist former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s firm Covington & Burling in its investigation of Uber’s workplace practices, told Uber’s more than 12,000 employees Tuesday that it looked into 215 complaints and took no action in 100 instances, the person said.

Employees were told that those fired were terminated for a range of reasons, including sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination. Perkins Coie did not reveal the names of those who were fired, the source said. Uber did not respond to a request for comment.

Uber hired Holder in February to lead an investigation into a former employee’s claims that the company failed to discipline a manager who mistreated female employees and that the company had ignored complaints of sexual harassment.

Holder’s assessment, which is expected to be published next Tuesday, will focus on the company’s overall workplace culture, whereas Perkins Coie’s assessment looks at individual complaints, a person with knowledge of the matter told the Los Angeles Times. Uber set up a hotline after a former employee accused the company of systemic workplace harassment, discrimination and cover-ups. Perkins Coie’s lawyers investigated complaints that came through the hotline.

That former employee, Susan Fowler – an Uber software engineer from November 2015 to December 2016 – said in February in a lengthy blog post on her personal website that a manager had propositioned her and, despite saving copies of their correspondence, human resources failed to discipline him.

“I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man’s first offense and that they wouldn’t feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning,” Fowler said.

Fowler’s blog post also alleged that Uber’s human resource department systemically covered up sexual harassment complaints. She said during her time at Uber, she spoke with many female employees who felt mistreated by some men at the company, and that “some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company.”

“It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being his ‘first offense,’” Fowler said.

Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, in February condemned the behavior Fowler described, saying that it was “abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in.”

In a memo to employees, he said he would bring on Holder to conduct an independent investigation into the incidents detailed in the blog post. Uber board member Arianna Huffington also flew to San Francisco in the days following the publication of Fowler’s blog post to oversee the investigation as the company went into damage control.

“I view it as my responsibility to hold the leadership team’s feet to the fire on this issue,” Huffington said in a statement.

But before the results of Holder’s investigation were published, Huffington defended Uber in March, telling CNN’s “Quest Means Business” that sexual harassment was not a systemic problem at the company.

“Yes, there were some bad apples, unquestionably,” she said. “But this is not a systemic problem. What is important is that the structures that were not in place are now being put in places to make sure that women, minorities, everyone, feels completely comfortable at Uber.”

The sexual harassment allegations came at a trying time for Uber, which spent the first half of the year dealing with a string of scandals. The company’s more recent troubles include customer backlash over Kalanick’s involvement with President Trump’s business advisory panel (Kalanick has since left the panel); a poorly-timed tweet during the president’s ban on travel from a number of majority-Muslim countries that spurred the #DeleteUber movement, which resulted in some 200,000 customers deleting the Uber app from their phones; video footage of Kalanick berating an Uber driver; a lawsuit from a Google-owned self-driving car start-up alleging that Uber stole the company’s trade secrets; and a string of high-profile departures.

Following the months of turbulence, Kalanick pledged to get “leadership help” by hiring a chief operating officer. The company has not yet said whether it has hired someone for the role.