A Google employee who authored a memo that mocked the company’s diversity policies and hiring of female coders has lost his appeal to the National Labor Relations Board.
The decision comes from an advice memo the agency issued to Google.
“Around that same time, numerous employees complained to HR about the [Damore’s] memorandum and at least two female engineering candidates for employment withdrew from consideration, citing the memo as their reason for doing so. Additionally, at least one employee contacted [Damore] directly and threatened retaliation,” Jayme Sophir, associate general counsel, Division of Advice.
The memo “posited that the Employer had a left-leaning ‘monoculture’ that created an ‘ideological echo chamber’ where contrary viewpoints were shamed intosilence.”
Other elements of the memo:
Women are more prone to “neuroticism,” resulting in women experiencing higher anxiety and exhibiting lower tolerance for stress, which “may contribute to . . . the lower number of women in high stress jobs”;
Men demonstrate greater variance in IQ than women, such that there are more men at both the top and bottom of the distribution.
Google, a division of Alphabet, fired Damore.
Following the appeal, the NLRB wrote that: “The Board has acknowledged that it has a duty to balance an employee’s statutorily-protected rights against an employer’s legitimate right to enforce its workplace rules and managerial prerogatives. An employer’s good-faith efforts to enforce its lawful anti-discrimination or anti-harassment policies must be afforded.”
“The Employer has a legitimate, lawful policy prohibiting race and sex discrimination and harassment in its workplace,” it added.
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