(5 minutes read)
· Facebook is up to face another charge and this time around it is something to do with racial discrimination.
· The world’s leading social networking company was accused of systemic discrimination in hiring, compensation and promotion of black people in a complaint to federal civil rights authorities in the US
Facebook is up to face another charge and this time around it is something to do with racial discrimination. The world’s leading social networking company was accused of systemic discrimination in hiring, compensation and promotion of black people in a complaint to federal civil rights authorities in the US.
The complainant to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a Washington-based operations program manager, Oscar Veneszee Jr.. Facebook is already facing a volley of charges and advertisement boycott over its failure to remove violent, divisive, racist and discriminatory posts. It has also faced criticism for its lack of
diversity. It may be noted that other major tech companies are also facing similar charges.
Oscar Veneszee Jr., who was hired by Facebook in 2017 to recruit other workers retired from the armed services, said he filed the complaint after his objections to Facebook managers over treatment of African Americans went nowhere. He had filed a class action to represent other Black people who have faced discrimination inside the
company. He also points out that the black Americans were unfairly denied jobs with the social network.
Veneszee says in the complaint that the only way to get contributions from black experience is to have more black employees at the company. Facebook, along with Google and Microsoft, have renewed pledges to prioritize diversity in the wake of the recent nationwide protests. The tech companies publicly abhorred systemic racism after the police killing of George Floyd.
Despite being good at his job, Veneszee said in the complaint, he was denied promotions, stalled by evaluations that said he merely meets expectations. These causal remarks he attributes to discrimination. According to Facebook’s own figures, just 1.5% of employees in technical roles in the US were Black in 2019, and 3.1% are Black among senior leadership.
