Sexual harassment charges also part of lawsuit against senior employees of Airbnb and Uber, which encourage lawbreaking as the essence of their business model
By Tim Redmond
OCTOBER 7, 2015 – There are assholes in every line of work, but the sharing economy seems to attract more than its share.
Maybe its the entitlement of sudden wealth. Maybe its a culture that says: Go ahead, break the law, it doesn’t matter – we can always fix things later. After all, Uber and Airbnb wouldn’t exist at anything remotely resembling their current valuation if they had obeyed existing rules in cities at the time they started.
So while I was horrified this morning to hear from a domestic worker who alleges she was cheated out of wages and sexually harassed as an employee of two tech execs, one working for Airbnb and the other from Uber, I wasn’t really surprised.
Julieta Dela Cruz Yang worked for seven years for Cameron Poetzscher and Varsha Rao. Her story is sadly familiar: A single mother from the Phillipines, she couldn’t find work that would allow her to feed and educate her three kids, so she left them behind and sought employment elsewhere.
Twelve million Filipios, 70 percent of them women, work outside of the country, sending $24 billion a year back to that nation’s economy.
Yang started working for Poetzscher and Rao in Singapore, then in 2013, followed them to San Francisco, and became a live-in domestic at their house in the Marina. She helped raise their kids, cooked meals, cleaned …. “I kept their household going so they could work,” she said.
Poetzscher is head of corporate development at Uber. Rao is head of global operations for Airbnb. These are, I suspect, not paupers; they can well afford to pay for childcare and domestic help.
However, the lawsuit states, “On April 15 2015, Yang was forced to quit her employment because of intolerable working conditions.”
Among those alleged conditions:
Yang was paid $450 a week but often had to work more than ten hours a day. She was not given regular, state-mandated meal breaks.
And:
When Defendant Rao was not at home, Defendant Poetzscher sexually harassed Plaintiff … the harassment included … nudity, comments of a sexual nature, unwanted sexual advances, and unwanted touching.”
On several occasions when Defendant Rao and the children were out, Defendant Poetzscher approached Plaintiff Yang while naked and asked her to put lotion on his body.
On one occasion, Defendant Poetzscher asked Plaintiff Yang if she was masturbating in the shower.
You get the picture.
At the press conference, Yang said that “there are many like me in the country” and that many domestic workers are afraid to speak out. No surprise, since workers like Yang live in the homes of their employers, may have nowhere else to go, and are the only means of support for a family.
In this case, she said she went to the Phillipine consulate for help, but the promise of a free lawyer never materialized. However, she said, someone at the consulate worked with Migrante Northern California, an immigrant rights group, and the organization connected her to legal support.
Through Migrante and her church, she said, she was able to find housing and another job.
She also found the Asian Law Caucus and the Women’s Employment Rights Clinic at Golden Gate University School of Law, which filed the complaint in Superior Court this morning.
I couldn’t reach either Poetzscher or Rao, but SF Weekly reports that Poetzscher released a statement reading:
“We are both deeply shocked and saddened by these allegations — which are completely and utterly false. Julieta worked as our nanny for seven years and was an important part of our family, someone both our children loved deeply. Julieta left in April, and we have not heard from her since then. We will make no further comment about this case.”
Yang filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing on Sept. 23. That’s required before a lawsuit over these sorts of issues can be filed. So it’s hard to believe that this is a complete surprise to Poetzscher or Rao.
These are, of course, allegations. They will be proven or dismissed in court, if the case doesn’t settle before trial.
And the fact that the couple work for two companies that encourage lawbreaking as the essence of their business plan – and have gotten away with it for years, as if the rules don’t apply to them – may have no relevance at all.
But you have to wonder.
