Uber said to fire more than 20 employees in harassment probe

More than 20 Uber employees have been fired after an investigation into sexual harassment. Photo / 123RF

Uber has fired more than 20 employees in recent weeks, the company told its employees Tuesday, as part of a wide-ranging investigation of the climate and culture at the popular ride-hailing service, said a person familiar with the action.

The report of the firings came from an attorney at the Perkins Coie law firm, which Uber hired to assist in a broader sexual harassment investigation at the company and which made a presentation at the company's weekly staff meeting Tuesday.

The company has faced a series of allegations of misconduct this year, including a criminal investigation by the Justice Department for using software to trick regulators and avoid government scrutiny.

Taken together, the probes have tarnished the image of one of Silicon Valley's most aggressive and widely emulated companies and its embattled chief executive, Travis Kalanick.

Bloomberg was the first to report the firings Tuesday.

The person who confirmed the news for The Washington Post was familiar with Uber's action and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter not yet announced publicly by the company.

The firings were among the first visible results of an investigation led by former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., who was hired by Kalanick after reports of widespread sexual harassment within the company, triggered by a blog post by former employee Susan Fowler in February.

In the post, Fowler, a site-reliability engineer, reported that her manager sent messages that she said made it clear "that he was trying to get me to have sex with him," but that Uber's upper management and human resources office declined to deal forcefully with her complaint.

Holder's investigation, which has produced a draft report on Uber's workplace culture that has not been publicly released, led to the discovery of specific cases of alleged sexual harassment. Those cases were referred to Perkins Coie to further investigate and resolve, leading to the firings outlined in Tuesday's staff meeting.

No names of fired employees or details of the alleged harassment have publicly emerged. Bloomberg reported that Perkins Coie reviewed 215 claims and took no action in 100 of those cases.