Earlier, Transgender employees of Netflix planned a walkout in protest against the company's co-CEO defending comedian Dave Chappelle s The Closer Special on the streaming platform. The announcement came as one trans employee was reinstated and was suspended for crashing a quarterly business review meeting she was not invited to attend.
The walkout is scheduled for Oct. 20. It comes in response to co-CEO Chappelle defending the company collaboration with Ted Sarandos, who faced years of backlash and claims that he is transphobic, including after The Closer was released this month.
Chappelle is one of the most successful stand-up comedians today. We have a long standing deal with him. His last special 'Sticks Stones, also controversial, is our most competitive, difficult and most watched stand-up special to date, Sarandos wrote in an internal memo obtained by Variety.
PC CULTURE HE One employee, Terra Field, and two other staffers were suspended recently for crashing a quarterly business meeting they were not invited to. Field, a Senior Software Engineer, had also posted an above-average post of Chappelle's special that went viral on Twitter.
The company said earlier this week that Field was not suspended for her Twitter thread, but for crashing the meeting. Since she was reinstated in the company and said on Twitter that Netflix found she had no ill-intent when joining the meeting that was just meant for company higher-ups
I was reinstated by Netflix after finding out there was ill intent in my absence at the QBR Meeting. I had given the explanation which I requested below. I'm going to take a few days off to decompress and try to figure out where I am at. At the very least, I feel vindicated, but Trans workers are taking issue with Strike defending Chappelle and report that his comments have inflamed the situation with Field, The Verge reported.
As we discussed through Slack, email, text and everything in between, our leadership has shown us that they don't uphold the values to which we are held. Between the numerous emails and non-answers that have been given, we have been told explicitly that we cannot understand the nuance of certain content.