Uber said it will open an "urgent investigation" following claims by a former employee of sexism and harassment at the company.
A former engineer named Susan Fowler published a blog on Sunday, which detailed her experience at Uber. The post claims the company refused to act beyond issuing a warning to a superior who she, and other female colleagues, accused of sexual harassment.
"After the first couple of weeks of training, I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird," writes Ms Fowler. "On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR."
Posting on Twitter shortly after the blog post went live, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick issued the following statement.
2/ I've instructed our CHRO Liane to conduct an urgent investigation. There can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber.
— travis kalanick (@travisk) February 20, 2017
Arianna Huffington, a member of Uber's board of directors, has said that she will work on the investigation into Fowler's allegations. She tweeted out her email address for anyone who wanted to contact her directly.