French tech workers union Solidaires Informatique has filed a class-action lawsuit against publishing giant Ubisoft.
In a post on its website, the organisation said that it had filed the complaint on July 15th, which directly names a number of high-profile former employees at the company, all of whom left in the process of an internal investigation, as well as CEO Yves Guillemot. The lawsuit is hoping to get justice for those who have accused Ubisoft of "institutional sexual harassment" and say the firm was a place where "sexual harassment is tolerated."
The company's former VP of editorial Tommy François, ex-chief creative officer Serge Hascoët as well as former global director of human resources Cécile Cornet, are all named directly, while the lawsuit also calls out Hascoët's assistant and a number of unnamed staff from Ubisoft's HR department.
"More importantly, the complaint targets the Ubisoft group as a legal person for institutional sexual harassment," Solidaires Informatique wrote, via Google Translate.
"For putting in place, maintaining and strengthening a system where sexual harassment is tolerated because it is more profitable for the company to keep harassers in place than to protect its employees. Harassment, tolerated and practiced by the top echelons of the company, protected by the Human Resources departments, created a company-wide system. Beyond the list of people mentioned above, it is the cogs of this system that this complaint wants to dismantle."
Almost a year ago to the day, Solidaires Informatique said that it was taking Ubisoft to court over the allegations made about the company's working culture.
When asked for comment, Ubisoft told GI.biz: "We do not have further details regarding the claim filed against Ubisoft" and reportedly referred the publication to the statement Guillemot made in May of this year when the CEO touted the "considerable progress" the firm had made. In September of last year, the exec apologised for not protecting staff at the company.
This comes in the wake of a number of allegations of harassment and misconduct by high-ranking members of Ubisoft staff in 2020. In a recent financial disclosure report, the company said that this scandal could have a negative impact on its ability to make new hires.
