Google employees are reportedly preparing to unveil a proposal that would tie executive pay to workplace diversity during a shareholder meeting on Wednesday.
CNBC reported the proposal put forth by Zevin Asset Management, and backed by some Google employees, specifically points to “metrics regarding diversity and inclusion” when deciding executive pay. According to the Zevin Asset Management website, the proposal would “help drive sustainability performance and improve senior executive accountability on race- and gender-based inclusion during a time of particular challenge in our Company’s development.”
One of the supporters of the proposal, Liz Fong-Jones, told USA Today she and others employees at Google “had exhausted our resources internally, and we felt that, No. 1, we are legally able to do this without getting fired and, No. 2, it was the right tool to apply to this issue.”
Fong-Jones also told Bloomberg, “There needs to be a clear signal from the shareholders that they value inclusion.”
The “particular challenge” in Google’s development refers to the firing engineer James Damore in the wake of the external publishing on his memo criticizing the organization’s “Ideological Echo Chamber.”
Fong-Jones, in fact, was cited by name in Damore’s lawsuit against Google for discrimination against conservatives, males, and whites. In his lawsuit, Damore referred to a post by Fong-Jones in which she said she didn’t care about being “unfair” to cisgender, straight, able-bodied, wealthy white men.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, is facing another similar lawsuit that alleges recruiters were told to cancel interviews with with applicants who were not “female, black or Hispanic.”
As CNBC noted, Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, has recommended its shareholders to vote against the proposal.
