The U.S. Labor Department has launched a whistleblower retaliation investigation, reports the Financial Times. The Department hasn’t provided details according to the article; however, it notes that Apple employee Ashley Gjovik received a December 10 letter from the Labor Department that confirmed the inquiry.
The senior engineering program manager was filed in September. Apple says she leaked confidential information.
For months, Gjøvik was openly tweeting allegations of bullying and mismanagement at the tech giant, claiming senior employees kept a whiteboard tally of votes on how they could make her “life a living hell”. She said she was regularly excluded from important emails, and that some were known to peer-pressure other employees into drinking alcohol during working hours, according to Business Insider.
On August 4, Apple placed Gjøvik on indefinite administrative leave after she tweeted about sexism in the office.
“For months, I have been raising concerns with Apple employee relations about years of experiences with sexism, a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, and retaliation,” Gjøvik said in an interview with The Verge. “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. I added that if there was no other option they could give me paid administrative leave. They apparently made no effort to set boundaries and instead said they were placing me on administrative leave and implied they did not want me on Slack where I had been vocal about my concerns with certain policies at the company. 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.”
