Uber fired 20 employees for sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior on Tuesday as a result of an investigation into the company's workplace culture, the New York Times reports.
The company announced the firings at a staff meeting in San Francisco, where employees were told that the company had looked into over 200 claims of discrimination, unprofessional behavior and bullying. 31 of the company's employees are already undergoing counseling or training for the incidents and 57 of the cases are still open
The investigation into Uber's workplace culture began after accusations of sexual harassment surfaced when former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post about her experiences at the company - and in short, they weren't good. Fowler repeatedly reported sexual advances made by her manager to human resources, who told her that her boss would only be given a warning. Yikes.
An anonymous current employee told BuzzFeed News that he was "not surprised about the number" of firings that took place on Tuesday - meaning Uber's problems with sexual harassment were probably even more widespread than Fowler's blog post made them out to be.
Hopefully this is a sign that Uber will finally start to take sexual harassment and discrimination seriously. In addition to looking into the claims made by employees, the company plans to continue using a confidential hotline that allows employees to report issues, and now has a system in place for following through with employee complaints.
