An Activision Blizzard employee presented a new trial in California courts, accusing the American company of sexual harassment and discrimination, in addition to having received retaliation after speaking publicly about his experience last December.
According to the request, published by Bloomberg Law, the employee (whose name is Jane Doe to protect her identity) worked in 2017 as a senior administrative assistant for guidelines within Activision Blizzard’s IT department. This employee claims that she was pressured to have alcoholic babies at work, that she received sexual abuse comments about her appearance and dress, that she suffered and tried to be fat and that women wanted participate in “cube crawls”, where sexual harassment and comments were received.
Doe says he has stopped wearing “more conservative” clothes and avoids attending awards outside the office to avoid sexual harassment, and assures that when excessive drinking by his supervisors stops, he says “leaders alone were great, trying to be their friends”. The lawsuit, which specifically names five Activision Blizzard employees, also explains that the company tells them the research is for itself only because it could result in “damage” to the company.
Because all this is not enough, the employee is assured that after presenting her questions, she began to face a hostile attitude at work. He was fired from several positions within the company when he tried to leave the IT department and was unable to do so until he sent a letter directly to then-president Allen J. Brack, exposing the predicament. Even then, the place he was offered was in a lower position and with significantly lower pay.
Doe also applied for an executive assistant position last November, but made sure his candidacy was revoked after will speak at a conference in Decemberin which he highlighted the cases of accusations, discrimination and reprimands that have endured at Activision Blizzard.
In addition to the damages claim, the lawsuit also asks Activision Blizzard to implement a rotation within the human resources department to avoid conflicts of interest, which contracts the services of a neutral research firm and fires CEO Bobby Kotick.
This new lawsuit is similar to several that are in progress, including the one presented by the State of California last July. It has been confirmed that the North American company has a toxic work culture and its CEO, Bobby Kotick, has been aware of the situation for years, taking no action to address it.
Recently, Activision Blizzard was also sued by the parents of an ex-employee who committed suicide while on a business trip in 2017, after being sexually abused by co-workers and superiors.
