Former employee alleges company ignored complaints about harassment.
A former GoDaddy employee has sued the company in U.S. District Court, alleging it discriminated against her after she complained of sexual harassment.
In the lawsuit, Rachel Pearson alleges that a co-worker engaged in “many offensive, hostile, and threatening acts” such as staring at her and touching her inappropriately. She claims that GoDaddy did not respond properly to her allegations, failed to promote her despite being a top salesperson, and later initiated the process to terminating her. She is suing for back pay, compensation for past and future pecuniary losses, and emotional pain and suffering.
The Go Daddy Group General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Christine Jones denied the allegations in a statement provided to Domain Name Wire:
There is no truth to Ms. Pearson’s allegations.
She was not subjected to sexual harassment or retaliation during her employment at Go Daddy.
Go Daddy takes all complaints of employee misconduct seriously. We thoroughly investigated Ms. Pearson’s allegations and could not substantiate them. Ms. Pearson has also already pursued these allegations through the EEOC, who also investigated her claims, and did not find any unlawful harassment or retaliation.
Go Daddy intends to vigorously defend this Complaint.
Andrew,
I am surprised you consider this news. As a journalist, it’s refreshing to see you at least got both sides on this… but in this country, people can accuse anyone of anything — but that doesn’t make it so.
Given the EEOC already dismissed it and this company’s track record as a premiere employer, might you have given this the benefit of the doubt and let the legal system do its job?
Maybe dragging Go Daddy down just helps your traffic? Seems short-sighted.
Michelle
Michelle, very much on the contrary.
You are correct, companies of GoDaddy’s size are frequently sued for this type of allegation. It’s the press’ job to report about it and get both sides of the story. GoDaddy has been sued previously for discrimination. The press wrote about that, and then it wrote about the decision as well (the jury found that GoDaddy didn’t discriminate).
I don’t think this drags GoDaddy in the mud. Instead, it gives them an opportunity to give its side before other press (that may not do the same) reports about the lawsuit. When a company gets sued, whether it be frivolous or not, the press reports on it.
Isn’t it the requirement of the free press to report news worthy information – positive or negative?
And, to present the facts they are able to establish.
Services like DNW, DNJ, DNN and others act as our industry “free press”.
Godaddy was quoted presenting their position.
Companies of their size have claims like this all of time.
All you need is one bad manager (out of hundreds) to cause the problem. Or, one bad employee that wants to get back at the company.
I don’t feel Andrew is slamming GD.
And, this article does not change my opinion of GD one way or another.
A company that uses mammary glands to sell domain names being accused of sexual harassment?
Boy, nobody could see that coming.
“I am surprised you consider this news.”
We live in a country where the political opinions of a beauty pageant contestant remains “newsworthy” for days. The bar is quite low for what counts as news.
Absent this particular news, GoDaddy is a public purveyor of soft porn on television. But that is not news either.
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John Berryhill,
You took the words right out my mouth.
😉
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Godaddy lowers the bar in a number of ways.
I can imagine that a company that uses soft porn to peddle domain names has a fairly liberal approach to workplace sexual conduct.
“I can imagine that a company that uses soft porn to peddle domain names has a fairly liberal approach to workplace sexual conduct.”
Or a very strict one because it knows this sort of thing would come up.
Michelle – the local newspaper in Arizona apparently thinks this is newsworthy (although it’s a week late on the story)
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2009/05/21/20090521sr-godaddyside0522.html