That settlement is part of a $10 million overall settlement announced in March as part of a class action discrimination suit against Uber. That suit, filed in October 2017, involves claims from 487 female and minority engineers going back to 2013.
Long a high-flying tech start-up fueled by the bravado of its onetime co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick, Uber hit rough waters in February 2017 with a blog post by former engineer Susan Fowler. Her bombshell account detailed a toxic, sexist work environment where discrimination complaints were often brushed aside.
Fowler’s piece quickly led to internal investigations that ultimately forced the resignation of Kalanick and, more recently, the firing of human resources boss Liane Hornsey after an investigation into her conduct including reportedly her handling of employee complaints about racism.
The original discrimination suit against Uber was filed by three Latina software engineers, Ingrid Avendano, Roxana del Toro Lopez and Ana Medina, who alleged that female engineers and engineers of color were paid less, hired for lower-level jobs, promoted more slowly, and subject to bias in their performance evaluations.
Details about the 56 current and former employees who also alleged harassment, a hostile work environment and emotional distress were in a court filing made Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The members of the suit will get, on average $33,928.57 for those claims of harassment. Awards will range from zero to $100,000, depending on their individual harassment experience.
Two of the 487 class action suit members opted out of the Settlement, the filing says.
“If we continue on this path and the Court grants final approval, class members should receive checks just before Christmas, and we’ll begin the three-year job of monitoring Uber’s progress in improving its policies and practices to be fair to all software engineers said the plaintiff’s lawyer Jahan Sagafi of Outten & Golden, which filed the suit.
Since hiring its new CEO, former Expedia boss Dara Khosrowshahi, a year ago, Uber has implemented a new employee salary and equity structure, overhauled its performance review process, and addressed diversity concerns with its first diversity and inclusion report and an extensive diversity and leadership training process.
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