On Friday, the walkout’s organizers said Google CEO Sundar Pichai is scheduled to meet with company leadership on Monday to discuss a plan to address their demands on stopping workplace sexual misconduct.
More than 20,000 Google workers participated in Thursday’s walkout to protest workplace sexual harassment at the tech giant.
On Friday, the walkout’s organizers released the estimate. According to them, employees and contract workers at 50 Google offices across the globe joined in on the protest.
The massive turnout may have also sparked the tech giant to act. “On Friday morning, executives notified the organizers that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would be meeting with his leadership team on Monday to review a plan that would address the demands,” the organizers said in a statement .
Friday’s statement from the organizers includes a story from an anonymous employee who claims Google’s human resources tried to silence her when she brought up an incident of sexual misconduct by another co-worker. “Every day, I went into work. I cried in the car for an hour, and I went into work and faced my harasser until I could not do it anymore, and I left that team,” the employee recounted.
The walkout’s organizers are demanding five specific changes at Google. They include the right to settle harassment claims in court, a commitment to ending “pay and opportunity inequity,” and for Google to create a clearer process for reporting sexual misconduct.
Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But company CEO Sundar Pichai has told employees he’s “dead serious” about stopping workplace sexual harassment at the tech giant. Last week, the company revealed it had fired 48 employees for sexual misconduct over the past two years; none of the employees received an exit package.
Of the walkouts that occured on Thursday, the rally at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, was the largest, with 4,000 workers present, according to organizers. The walkout in New York, meanwhile, drew about 3,000 staffers. But at the moment, it isn’t clear how the organizers arrived at their estimates.
Also, not every Google employee participated in the walkout. One staffer told Vox that some people at the tech giant disagree with the organizer’s demands.
Google’s parent, Alphabet, reported employing 94,000 people in this year’s third quarter.
