Apple woman worker sent on leave after raising sexism concerns

According to senior engineering programme manager Ashley M. Gjovik, the Apple employee relations team had placed her on indefinite paid leave after she raised concerns about a hostile workplace.

San Francisco: A female Apple employee who tweeted about sexism and unsafe working conditions at the office said on Thursday that she has been asked by the company to go on indefinite administrative leave.

According to senior engineering programme manager Ashley M. Gjovik, the Apple employee relations team had placed her on indefinite paid leave after she raised concerns about a hostile workplace.

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“So, following raising concerns to #Apple about #sexism, #hostileworkenvironment, & #unsafeworkconditions, I’m now on indefinite paid administrative leave per #Apple employee relations, while they investigate my concerns. This seems to include me not using Apple’s internal Slack,” she said in a tweet.

She told The Verge that for months, she has been raising concerns with Apple employee relations about “years of experiences with sexism, a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, and retaliation”.

“I asked them to mitigate the hostile work environment while they investigate, and they initially offered me EAP therapy and medical leave. I told them that made no sense, and said they should talk to my leadership and set up oversight and boundaries,” Gjovik was quoted as saying.

Apple was yet to react to her claims.

“They also implied they didn’t want me to meet one-on-one with other women at the company about their concerns with Apple policies, which I had been doing,” she claimed.

This is the second time Apple has investigated Gjovik’s claims about sex discrimination at the company.

“The employee relations team closed an earlier investigation, allegedly finding that nothing was wrong, prompting Gjovik to tweet screenshots with what she says is just a small portion of what she experienced,” according to the report.

In May this year, Apple which hired ex-Facebook product manager Antonio Garcia Martinez, fired him following public and internal calls for removal and investigation due to the alleged misogynistic statements he made in the past.

Martinez authored a controversial book about Silicon Valley where he expressed misogynistic views on women.

Shortly after the petition began circulating internally at Apple, Martinez’s Slack account was deactivated.

“At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted. Behaviour that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here,” a company spokesperson had said.