Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said Sunday that the ride-sharing company will investigate new allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination in its workplace. After former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a nearly 3,000-word blog post Sunday describing a nightmarish workplace culture in which male superiors solicited her for sex and human resources officers shrugged off her concerns about sexist company practices, Kalanick vowed there would be a probe into the allegations. In a statement sent to The Huffington Post, he wrote: I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace FOR EVERYONE and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber – and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired. You can read the entirety of Fowler’s blog post here. Her criticism comes as the company continues to deal with the fallout over Kalanick holding a since-relinquished role on President Donald Trump’s business advisory board. The company also faced accusations of sexual misconduct last year. Last March, a report charged that Uber had received thousands of customer complaints about rape and sexual assault from riders between December 2012 and August 2015. The company argues that rape allegations represented just 0.0000009 percent of customer journeys during that time, and that sexual assault claims occurred in one in every 3.3 million trips. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson has also called on Uber to start releasing a workplace diversity report amid concerns that it employs few women and ethnic minorities. The company is among the biggest not to commit to such transparency, Inc. reported last month.
