Google Systemic Pay Discrimination
They are yet again being sued, this time for gender pay discrimination. Three female employees sued the company claiming they were put on dead end career paths. They claimed those positions would pay them far less than their male counterparts.
A federal labor investigation performed an analysis which showed “systemic pay discrimination” in the company’s headquarters in California, which employs 21,000 people. In the preliminary stages of the review, it was found that women earned less in just about every job classification.
The tech giant has disputed the findings of the investigation, saying there is no gender pay gap.
Google Lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, and is led by Altshuler Berzon LLP who is representing the three plaintiffs, Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri. The women quit when they realized that the career path they were on would pay less than the career paths of male employees.
Kelly Ellis, one of the plaintiffs, released a statement saying, “I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google.” Ellis, an engineer, resigned from Google in 2014 claiming that male engineers with comparable experience were hired and paid more. She also claims she was continuously passed over for promotions despite outstanding performance reviews. Ellis states that this is a widespread issue in the tech industry and needs to be addressed.
A Google spokesperson defended the company’s hiring and promotion practices saying, “job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no gender bias in these decisions.”
Department of Labor
In January, the Department of Labor filed a lawsuit to bar Google from obtaining government contracts until it released documents pertaining to an audit over their employee compensation practices.
Google said they will take serious review of the lawsuit, but disagree with all of the allegations.
That’s it for now. What are your thoughts on this? Join my conversation on my Facebook Law Page, Google+ page, Twitter feed, or in one of my LinkedIn group discussions.
