Tech giants seem to be getting into the spirit of giving during the holidays. Just as Apple decided to pay a settlement over a class action suit, Activision Blizzard is set to do the same over a gender discrimination and harassment lawsuit.
Acitivsion's Settlement
The video game publisher has had a rough reputation for favoring its male employees, which has finally cost the company after a lawsuit was filed. Activision announced on December 15th that it would pay $50 million to settle.
The lawsuit was filed by California's Civil Rights Department back in 2021, accusing the company leadership of ignoring employee complaints about pay disparity, gender and sexuality-based harassment, and discrimination, as reported by Kotaku.
Activision continues to deny the allegations, saying that an internal investigation has been conducted by the board of directors and that there was no evidence found of wrongdoing. Of course, it's hard to trust an investigation headed by the people who would also suffer the consequences of it.
What's worse is that $50 million much lower than the anticipated settlement charges. The state estimated that the liability goes up to nearly $1 billion for 2,500 employees who might have claims against the company.
By 2022, Activision has seen a growth in its workforce and reached 13,000 employees. With the recent finalization of Microsoft's acquisition of the company, Activision employees will now work under Microsoft, but it might not be as different.
Microsoft's Past Discrimination Case
Back in 2019, Microsoft has also been accused of discrimination and harassment against female employees as well, which seems to be an ongoing theme in a lot of tech giants. Bosses would brush off the complaints repeatedly.
The realization of such treatment began when a female employee asked her female coworkers for career advice, as she did not see any improvements in her position after working the same job for six years, as reported by Vox.
Some of the harassment claims were already bad enough, with one woman saying a coworker asked her to sit in his lap during a meeting, and the HR manager present did nothing about it, but some even went as far as being life-threatening.
Another female worker said that a contractor threatened to kill her during a business trip if she refused to perform an intimate act with him. When the issue was brought to the boss, he merely said that it was just a coworker "flirting,"
Unfortunately, that's just regarding the treatment of women in the office daily. When it came to getting ahead in their careers and departments, women were also passed over for promotions and were assigned to secretarial work.
An email thread was created listing all the complaints that female employees had, and it reached up to 90 pages long. The HR dealing with the complaints, Kathleen Hogan said that she would personally investigate the complaints.
"We are appalled and sad to hear about these experiences. It is very painful to hear these stories and to know that anyone is facing such behavior at Microsoft. We must do better," Hogan replied in the email thread.
