A former Amazon.com manager says she was fired after she complained to higher-ups that her supervisor told her to scan the social media accounts of prospective hires to determine their race and gender.
In a wrongful termination suit filed Monday in Alameda Superior Court in Oakland, Lisa McCarrick, a former regional loss prevention manager in California, said she knew Amazon had been criticized publicly for its lack of diversity in the workplace.
McCarrick “reasonably believed that scouring social media accounts for the purpose of ascertaining race and ethnicity was unlawful,” according to the lawsuit.
The 38-year-old California woman said she was fired in November, two months after submitting the complaint, despite having earned positive job evaluations during her 16-month tenure at the company. During the termination meeting, she said she was told that her direct supervisor had admitted to using social media accounts to determine race and ethnicity.
McCarrick also claims she was paid less than her male counterparts for essentially doing the same job.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
