Uber is the target of a US survey on sex discrimination

Uber Technologies Inc. is the subject of a sexual discrimination investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the United States, said a person aware of new issues raised by the company's business culture. , focuses on allegations of wage disparity and other discriminatory behavior towards women, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the case is private. It is one of at least half a dozen federal investigations on the company that was born last year

Uber is trying to rebuild its reputation after a tumultuous year during which allegations of discrimination and dubious business practices. the dismissal of about 20 employees and the ousting of co-founder Travis Kalanick as general manager. Dara Khosrowshahi, who took Kalanick's place in September, said that he was making Uber a more ethical endeavor.

But Khosrowshahi's efforts suffered two major setbacks last week. On Tuesday, Uber said Liana Hornsey, the chief of human resources, was leaving. The staff change came after a charge that she did not take allegations of racial discrimination seriously. On Friday, the New York Times reported that Barney Harford, Khosrowshahi's appointed operations director, had apologized to employees after complaints that he had made insensitive racist remarks during a conference call.

"We are continually improving as a business and have proactively made a lot of changes over the past 18 months," said Matt Kallman, spokesman for Uber. He said the San Francisco-based company is putting in place a new pay and equity structure, reworking its performance appraisal process and deploying diversity and leadership training for most of its 18,000 employees worldwide. The survey on discrimination was reported earlier Monday by the Wall Street Journal.

The EEOC declined to comment on the investigation, citing confidentiality rules. "The information only becomes public when the EEOC files a complaint, which is usually a last resort," said spokeswoman Kimberly Smith-Brown. The agency has been closely examining Silicon Valley in recent years. In 2016, Google investigated age discrimination and investigates similar claims at Intel Corp.

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