This Is What Google's CEO Thinks About Employee Sexual Misconduct Walkout

Google is the latest major tech company to come under the spotlight for sexual harassment in the workplace and its CEO reportedly offered some support for employees who plan to protest this week. Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to employees on Tuesday apologizing for the company’s actions and seemingly condoning Thursday’s planned walkout, Axios reported.

In the email, published in full by Axios, Pichai said it was “personally important’ to him that Google work harder to make a safe, inclusive workplace. He closed out the email with a statement of support for the employee protest.

“Some of you have raised very constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes going forward. I am taking in all your feedback so we can turn these ideas into action. We will have more to share soon,” Pichai said. “In the meantime, [HR head Eileen Naughton] will make sure managers are aware of the activities planned for Thursday and that you have the support you need.”

The planned “women’s walk” was organized by more than 200 Google engineers and will take place on Thursday, barring any changes, Buzzfeed first reported. The walkout came after a New York Times article shed light on the $90 million exit package given to Android creator Andy Rubin upon his departure from Google in 2014.

There was an allegation of sexual misconduct against Rubin that Google reportedly found credible, but instead of firing him, Google paid him to leave, according to the Times. Rubin has since denied the allegations. After the Times article was published, Pichai admitted Google had fired nearly 50 employees, more than a dozen of which were senior managers, in the past two years for sexual harassment.

Following those two reports, Rich DeVaul, director of X, a research and development subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, reportedly left the company Tuesday without an exit package after sexual harassment accusations.

Google employees have also recently protested the company’s work on a censored version of its namesake search engine in China.