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Google sacks male engineer in diversity row
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Google has fired the male engineer at the center of an uproar in Silicon Valley over the past week after he authored an internal memo asserting there are biological causes behind gender inequality in the tech industry.
James Damore, the engineer who wrote the memo, confirmed his dismissal, saying in an e-mail to Reuters on Monday that he had been fired for 鈥減erpetuating gender stereotypes.鈥
Damore said he was exploring all possible legal remedies, and that before being fired, he had submitted a charge to the US National Labor Relations Board accusing Google upper management of trying to shame him into silence.
鈥淚t鈥檚 illegal to retaliate against an NLRB charge,鈥 he wrote in the e-mail.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc based in Mountain View, California, said it could not talk about individual employee cases.
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told employees in a note on Monday that portions of the anti-diversity memo 鈥渧iolate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,鈥 according to a copy of the note seen by Reuters.
It was not immediately clear what legal authority Damore could try to invoke. Non-union or 鈥渁t will鈥 employees, such as most tech workers, can be fired in the United States for a wide array of reasons that have nothing to do with performance.
The US National Labor Relations Act guarantees workers, whether they are in a union or not, the right to engage in 鈥渃oncerted activities鈥 for their 鈥渕utual aid or protection.鈥
Damore, though, would likely face an uphill fight to seek that protection based on his memo, said Alison Morantz, a Stanford University law professor with expertise in labor law.
鈥淚t鈥檚 going to be a hard sell that this activity was either concerted or for mutual aid or protection, rather than simply venting or pitting one group of workers against the others, which does not sound very mutual,鈥 Morantz said.
Debate over the treatment of women in the male-dominated tech industry has raged for months. Claims of persistent sexual harassment in the ranks of Uber Technologies Inc and of several venture capital firms led to management shakeups.
Management at the largest tech firms, including Google, have publicly committed to diversifying their workforces, although the percentage of women in engineering and management roles remains low at many companies.
The US Department of Labor is investigating whether Google has unlawfully paid women less than men. The company has denied the charges.
Damore asserted in his 3,000-word document that circulated inside the company last week that 鈥淕oogle鈥檚 left bias has created a politically correct monoculture鈥 which prevented honest discussion of diversity.
The engineer, who has a doctoral degree in systems biology from Harvard University, according to his LinkedIn page, attacked the idea that gender diversity should be a goal.
鈥淭he distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and ... these differences may explain why we don鈥檛 see equal representation of women in tech and leadership,鈥 Damore wrote in the memo.
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