New York
CNN
—
A former TikTok senior government is suing the corporate alleging that she skilled discrimination primarily based on her age and gender throughout her three years working for the corporate.
Katie Puris, who labored in advertising and marketing at TikTok beginning in 2019, says she confronted uneven expectations as a girl, was retaliated in opposition to for elevating issues concerning the alleged therapy and was in the end pushed out of the corporate in fall 2022, in line with a criticism filed Thursday within the Southern District Court docket of New York.
Puris additionally alleges the corporate inadequately responded after she says she reported having been sexually harassed at an occasion she attended for work.
TikTok informed Puris she had been fired for “efficiency causes,” in line with the criticism. TikTok didn’t reply to a request for remark concerning the lawsuit.
Puris’ lawsuit will not be the primary time the social media big has come below fireplace for alleged discrimination.
Her claims come after two Black former US ByteDance employees filed a formal complaint with the US Equal Employment Alternative Fee in September, asking the company to analyze alleged racial discrimination and retaliation in opposition to Black employees on the firm. On the time, a TikTok spokesperson informed CNN that the corporate has “sturdy insurance policies in place that prohibit discrimination, harassment, and retaliation within the office.”
In Could 2023, Puris additionally filed a cost of discrimination and retaliation with the Equal Employment Alternative Fee, previous to submitting the lawsuit Thursday.
Puris most just lately served as TikTok’s head of world model and artistic within the firm’s New York workplace and beforehand labored in different senior advertising and marketing promoting and roles, together with at Fb and Google. One advert marketing campaign she labored on whereas at TikTok was named to AdWeek’s checklist of “13 Campaigns That Made Advert Execs Jealous in 2021,” the criticism states.
After being invited to satisfy with a senior government at TikTok guardian firm ByteDance beginning in 2020, Puris “was subjected to disparate therapy” as a result of senior leaders “decided that Ms. Puris lacked the docility and meekness particularly required of feminine workers,” the criticism states. It provides that “Ms. Puris, an completed government who celebrated and advocated for her workforce’s successes, didn’t match that stereotypical gender mould.”
Based on the criticism, senior leaders on the firm brazenly expressed a desire for hiring “younger, much less skilled workers who they believed to be extra revolutionary and pliable.” When a separate supervisor later “implied that the Firm didn’t need as many high-level workers … Ms. Puris understood this to reference her age,” the criticism states.
In early 2022, Puris raised issues with human sources about her workforce’s “excessive workload” and the toll it was taking over their psychological well being and well-being, noting that “at the very least 5 members on the workforce have taken or are presently on medical go away this yr because of the extreme stress and strain of the work,” the criticism states. It provides that Puris was knowledgeable that taking go away herself would impression her compensation.
Puris alleges that she confronted numerous types of retaliation after elevating issues with human sources and administration that she was being discriminated in opposition to and that her well being was struggling due to her workload, together with receiving poor efficiency opinions and having the scale of her workforce decreased. Puris was pressured by managers to offer sure workers decrease efficiency scores, even once they didn’t deserve them, to justify their terminations, in line with the criticism.
“As well as, after Ms. Puris’ protected complaints, TikTok started minimizing her within the Firm and essential selections affecting her workforce had been made with out her enter,” the criticism states.
Whereas on a piece journey with different TikTok advertising and marketing workers to the Cannes Lion occasion in June 2022, Puris says she was sexually harassed by an worker from one of many firm’s enterprise companions whereas at a piece dinner. The person was “slurring his speech, spilled a complete glass of wine on Ms. Puris’ plate, and started repeatedly touching Ms. Puris’ arm, asking her the place to get together after the dinner and the place they might go dancing,” the criticism states, including {that a} coworker ultimately helped her exit the scenario.
After reporting the incident to a supervisor the next day, Puris alleges it was almost every week till she heard from TikTok’s ethics workforce and greater than a month till she acquired affirmation that the enterprise companion’s worker had been faraway from the TikTok account.
The lawsuit might also add to the scrutiny TikTok was already dealing with in america over its connections to its Chinese language guardian firm, ByteDance, which was once more raised as a problem in a Senate hearing with social media leaders together with TikTok CEO Shou Chew late final month.
Puris alleges that after Chew took over as TikTok’s chief government in Could 2021 within the face of scrutiny of China’s affect over the social media app, management of at the very least one key division remained with ByteDance management. The International Enterprise Options workforce, which Puris’ unit was part of and which “managed the entire promoting {dollars} generated by TikTok, and in the end what, the place and when adverts ran,” continued to report as much as a senior ByteDance government in China, the criticism states.
Puris is searching for unspecified monetary damages.