GitHub admits mistake in firing Jewish employee who warned colleagues to ‘stay safe’ from Nazis amid riot on Capitol Hill



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GitHub apologized and offered his job to a former employee on Sunday, after an investigation revealed “significant errors in judgment and procedure” after the man, who is Jewish, was fired for warning his colleagues to watch out for the Nazis on the day of the riot at the Capitol.

GitHub, the code sharing site owned by Microsoft Corp. MSFT,
-0.17%,
also said his human resources manager resigned.

The anonymous employee was fired on Jan. 8, two days after posting a message to his colleagues in the Washington, DC area on an internal Slack channel: “Stay safe, the Nazis are on the way.” Another employee allegedly took offense and complained to HR.

Among the far-right factions that took part in the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, which left five people dead, were white supremacists who publicly displayed Nazi shirts and banners.

The shooting sparked an uproar, both on GitHub and online. In a blog post on Sunday, Erica Brescia, chief operating officer of GitHub, said the company opened an outside investigation into the matter last week, which revealed the dismissal was wrong.

“In light of these findings, we immediately reversed the decision to separate from the employee and are in communication with his representative,” she wrote. “To the employee, we want to say publicly: we sincerely apologize.”

Brescia said the company’s human resources manager, whom she did not name, “took personal responsibility and resigned. Carrie Olesen had previously served as the Director of Human Resources at GitHub.

Brescia added that “employees are free to voice their concerns about Nazis, anti-Semitism, white supremacy or any other form of discrimination or harassment in internal discussions.”

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