Sexual harassment: Google sacks 48 employees

Search engine, Google Inc said it had fired 48 employees for sexual harassment over the past two years.

Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, made the statement in an email on Thursday.

Pichai said this in response to a New York Times story that the search engine giant protected three senior executives from allegations of sexual misconduct by offering them payouts.

The Times story was published earlier on Thursday.

The email, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, said of the 48 that were fired, 13 were senior managers or held more senior posts.

However, Pichai said none of those employees received any exit package.

The email, which was also signed by Google’s vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton, said that company employees could use internal tools to report cases of inappropriate behavior anonymously.

It also said that Google has updated its policy to require all vice presidents and senior vice presidents to disclose any relationship with a co-worker regardless of reporting line or presence of conflict.

“We are committed to ensuring that Google is a workplace where you can feel safe to do your best work, and where there are serious consequences for anyone who behaves inappropriately,” the email said.

Reuters