Manager sues Facebook claiming bias against black employees
An African American manager and two job applicants who were rejected by Facebook filed a complaint against the company Thursday, alleging that the social media giant is biased against Black employees in evaluations, promotions, pay and hiring practices.
The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces civil rights laws in employment, is the latest salvo in mounting tensions over how Facebook handles issues of race.
Facebook has said in the past that it is working to promote diversity and inclusion.
“We believe it is essential to provide all employees with a respectful and safe working environment. We take any allegations of discrimination seriously and investigate every case,” spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement about the lawsuit.
More than 500 advertisers are boycotting the platform for what they say is a failure to control divisive and hateful content. Employees have protested chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to leave up a racially divisive post by President Donald Trump that many interpreted to be a call for violence against protesters in Minneapolis.
Two years ago, a Black executive quit in frustration over the company’s treatment of its Black employees, who constitute less than 4% of the social network’s roughly 45,000-member workforce. His complaints were echoed by other Black workers the following year.
The EEOC complaint is being brought by Oscar Veneszee, a 46-year-old operations program manager and decorated 23-year veteran of the Navy whose job was to help recruit veterans to the company. It is also being brought by two African American workers whom Veneszee recruited but the company chose not to hire, despite what the lawsuit says were qualifications above those stated for the positions for which they applied.
Corporate America has been shaken in recent weeks as protests over the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody erupted and helped trigger new examination of diversity and prejudice in the workforce. Silicon Valley in particular, with a primarily white and Asian workforce, has come under fire for its treatment of workers of color and a general lack of diversity.
The complaint against Facebook alleges a pattern of discrimination and bias against Black employees in evaluations, promotions, pay and hiring practices. It takes aim at standard recruiting practices in Silicon Valley, including a strong reliance on “culture fit,” which means that fellow employees and managers heavily weigh whether the applicant fits in culturally, and the practice of having existing employees, who are predominantly white and of Asian descent, conduct recruiting and peer evaluations. These practices, the complaint says, result in biased outcomes such as curtailing opportunities for advancement and higher pay for people who don’t fit the mold.
Eighty-seven percent of Facebook’s workers are either Asian or white, a racial makeup that is on par with other Silicon Valley companies, according to the company. Black workers constitute 3.8%. They make up 1.5% of Facebook’s workers in technical jobs and 3.1% of senior leadership – a number that has barely budged despite Zuckerberg’s acknowledgments of a diversity problem.
Veneszee said in an interview that when he moved to California to work for Facebook three years ago, he was thrilled to make the jump from a longtime career in the Navy to a job recruiting other veterans to join one of the world’s most powerful technology companies.
Knowing he would be one of few Black employees working at the company’s sprawling campus in Menlo Park, California, he figured he would be underestimated and have to work harder than other people to prove his worth, he said. He referred to it as an expectation of par-for-the-course discrimination known as “the Black tax” in corporate America.