GitHub, a technology company owned by Microsoft, apologized on Sunday for what its COO, Erica Brescia, called “significant errors of judgment” after outrage over having fired an employee, who is Jewish, for warning that “Nazis” were among the professionals -Donald Trump mob who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
“In light of these findings, we immediately revoked the decision to split from the employee and contacted his representative,” wrote Brescia in a blog post. “For the employee, we want to say publicly: we sincerely apologize.”
According to Insider, who first reported the resignation, the technology company fired the employee two days after he predicted the potential Nazi insurrection links in a company chat room. The message supposedly warned “be safe bro, the Nazis are close by”.
The shooting sparked immediate protests among officials. In response, GitHub hired an outside company to investigate. The results, released on Friday, revealed procedural errors that resulted in the technology company’s offer to the employee back, and the head of human resources on Saturday.
Subsequently, employees circulated a letter demanding that the company answer questions about the employee’s dismissal, while urging them to denounce white supremacy.
In Sunday’s blog post, GitHub noted that the executive acknowledged that “employees are free to express concerns about Nazis, anti-Semitism, white supremacy or any other form of discrimination or harassment” in an earlier statement shared with employees.
“It was terrible last week to watch a violent crowd, including Nazis and white supremacists, attack the United States Capitol,” said Friedman’s post. “The fact that these odious ideologies managed to reach the sacred seat of our democratic republic in 2021 is disgusting.”