Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has ordered an "urgent investigation" into sexual harassment allegations made by former engineer Susan Fowler in a blog post published Sunday.
Fowler claims her manager sent her a series of inappropriate messages over company chat on her first day of rotating on the ride-hailing service's site reliability engineer team.
"It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR," wrote Fowler, adding that because her supervisor was a "high performer," upper management didn't feel comfortable punishing him.
Fowler went on to say that she was criticized for making multiple reports of gender discrimination and was threatened to be fired after reaching out to human resources. She also said she met other women within the company who experienced similar problems.
"Over the next few months, I began to meet more women engineers in the company. As I got to know them and heard their stories, I was surprised that some of them had stories similar to my own," added Fowler. "Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company."
[READMORE] READ MORE: Uber CEO Quits Trump's Economic Advisory Group Over Travel Ban [/READMORE]
Kalanick took to Twitter Sunday to address Fowler's allegations, calling them "abhorrent" and threatening repercussions for employees who disagree.
Arianna Huffington, who recently joined Uber's board of directors, said she plans to work on the investigation and encouraged people to reach out.
The allegations are the latest in what's been a string of black eyes for Uber of late. Fowler's post comes less than one month after the hashtag #DeleteUber began trending on social media following the company's controversial response to President Donald Trump's travel ban.
Before that, the company reached a $20 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over a lawsuit claiming that it misled prospective drivers regarding earnings potential in certain markets and terms of vehicle financing and lease options through its Vehicle Solutions Program.
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, subscribe to the daily TravelPulse newsletter.
Topics From This Article to Explore
