Slashdot Mirror

The U.S. Department of Labor is accusing Google of discriminating against its female employees and violating federal employment laws with its salaries for women. "We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce," Janette Wipper, a Department of Labor regional director, testified in court in San Francisco on Friday. The Guardian reports: Google strongly denied the accusations of inequities, claiming it did not have a gender pay gap. The allegations emerged at a hearing in federal court as part of a lawsuit the DoL filed against Google in January, seeking to compel the company to provide salary data and documents to the government. Google is a federal contractor, which means it is required to allow the DoL to inspect and copy records and information about its its compliance with equal opportunity laws. Last year, the department's office of federal contract compliance programs requested job and salary history for Google employees, along with names and contact information, as part of the compliance review. Google, however, repeatedly refused to hand over the data, which was a violation of its contractual obligations with the federal government, according to the DoL's lawsuit. Labor officials detailed the government's discrimination claims against Google at the Friday hearing while making the case for why the company should be forced to comply with the DoL's requests for documents. Wipper said the department found pay disparities in a 2015 snapshot of salaries and said officials needed earlier compensation data to evaluate the root of the problem and needed to be able to confidentially interview employees.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday to get the Internet company to turn over compensation data on its employees. The data request is part of a routine audit into Google's equal opportunity hiring practices, which is required because of the company's role as a federal contractor. Google provides cloud computing services to various federal agencies and the military. Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more. According to the lawsuit, Google has repeatedly refused to provide names, contact information, job history and salary history details that the government has requested for its employees. The Labor Department is now requesting that a judge order all of Google's federal contracts canceled unless it complies with the data request. "Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so," Thomas M. Dowd, acting director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement. "We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday to get the Internet company to turn over compensation data on its employees. The data request is part of a routine audit into Google's equal opportunity hiring practices, which is required because of the company's role as a federal contractor. Google provides cloud computing services to various federal agencies and the military. Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more. According to the lawsuit, Google has repeatedly refused to provide names, contact information, job history and salary history details that the government has requested for its employees. The Labor Department is now requesting that a judge order all of Google's federal contracts canceled unless it complies with the data request. "Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so," Thomas M. Dowd, acting director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement. "We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation."

Palantir Technologies is a secretive start-up in Silicon Valley that specializes in big data analysis. It was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings, and is backed by the FBI and CIA as it "helps government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud," according to Reuters. Today, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it discriminated against Asian job applicants. Reuters reports: The lawsuit alleges Palantir routinely eliminated Asian applicants in the resume screening and telephone interview phases, even when they were as qualified as white applicants. In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of more than 130 qualified applicants for the role of engineering intern. About 73 percent of those who applied were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers Palantir's conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians. "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges. The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians," the lawsuit said. Palantir denied the allegations in a statement and said it intends to "vigorously defend" against them. The lawsuit seeks relief for persons affected, including lost wages.

The Department of Labor's overtime rule is expected to be updated some time later this summer, and when it does, you will soon be entitled to overtime pay if you make less than $50,000 per year. According to Gawker, "It now appears that even if you are a salaried employee or some sort of 'manager,' you will still be entitled to time-and-a-half pay for working more than 40 hours per week, as long as your total salary falls under the threshold." How did they come to this conclusion? Gawker points out that the Department of Labor promotes a Wall Street Journal story which says that "The threshold would be increased to $970, or $50,440 annually. That level is about the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for salaried workers." Hamilton Nolan writes, "This rule has been a matter of political contention for years. But now that it is actually approaching, its import is becoming clear: overtime pay, which has long been isolated to a minority of workers, is about to be extended to almost the entire middle class."

fiannaFailMan (702447) writes that LinkedIn was just fined for the all too common practice of requiring workers to work off the clock Following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, LinkedIn has agreed to pay over $3 million in overtime back wages and $2.5 million in liquidated damages to 359 former and current employees working at company branches in four states. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires companies to have record-keeping systems in place to record overtime hours worked and to ensure that employees are paid for those hours, requirements that the company was not meeting.

An anonymous reader writes "Student interns are typically relegated to menial tasks like fetching coffee and taking out the trash, the idea being that they get paid in experience instead of money. On Tuesday, Manhattan Federal District Court Judge William H. Pauley disagreed, ruling in favor of two interns who sued Fox Searchlight Pictures to be paid for their work on the 2010 film Black Swan. The interns did chores that otherwise would have been performed by paid employees. Pauley ruled, in accordance with criteria laid out by the U.S. Department of Labor, that unpaid internships should be educational in nature and specifically structured to the benefit of the intern, and reasoned that if interns are going to do grunt work like regular employees, then they should be paid like regular employees." The article seems to imply that this might be the beginning of the end for the rampant abuse of unpaid internships: "Judge Pauley rejected the argument made by many companies to adopt a 'primary benefit test' to determine whether an intern should be paid, specifically whether 'the internship’s benefits to the intern outweigh the benefits to the engaging entity.' Judge Pauley wrote that such a test would be too subjective and unpredictable."

theodp writes "To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ (PDF). According to the Federal Register (PDF), an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers. A cached Monster.com ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US). BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'" There's no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.

rwiedower writes "So the House just voted to scrap the new overtime rules that went into effect August 23. The vote was 223-193. Were the new rules designed to shaft IT workers from getting overtime? Or were they merely designed to streamline outdated rules?"

Papa Legba asks: "I am in a battle, with a now ex-employer, over the unpaid overtime that I incurred while working in their IT department. I refused to accept the answer 'you are a computer guy, you don't get overtime' and did some looking. My research has turned up these relevant documents: the definition of exempt Computer professional at section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA managed by the Department of Labor, the amendments in the ESA labeled C.F.R.541.3(a)(4) and C.F.R.541.303 , and a site referring to a letter, which I cannot find a copy of. The letter describes a Dept. of Labor ruling from December 4, 1998 that set out who qualifies as a computer professional. Can anyone find this letter, and is there any more documents that I am missing. I have a lawyer but this is a very specific area and I want to do this right. Has anyone else fought this battle?"

Papa Legba asks: "I am in a battle, with a now ex-employer, over the unpaid overtime that I incurred while working in their IT department. I refused to accept the answer 'you are a computer guy, you don't get overtime' and did some looking. My research has turned up these relevant documents: the definition of exempt Computer professional at section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA managed by the Department of Labor, the amendments in the ESA labeled C.F.R.541.3(a)(4) and C.F.R.541.303 , and a site referring to a letter, which I cannot find a copy of. The letter describes a Dept. of Labor ruling from December 4, 1998 that set out who qualifies as a computer professional. Can anyone find this letter, and is there any more documents that I am missing. I have a lawyer but this is a very specific area and I want to do this right. Has anyone else fought this battle?"

Papa Legba asks: "I am in a battle, with a now ex-employer, over the unpaid overtime that I incurred while working in their IT department. I refused to accept the answer 'you are a computer guy, you don't get overtime' and did some looking. My research has turned up these relevant documents: the definition of exempt Computer professional at section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA managed by the Department of Labor, the amendments in the ESA labeled C.F.R.541.3(a)(4) and C.F.R.541.303 , and a site referring to a letter, which I cannot find a copy of. The letter describes a Dept. of Labor ruling from December 4, 1998 that set out who qualifies as a computer professional. Can anyone find this letter, and is there any more documents that I am missing. I have a lawyer but this is a very specific area and I want to do this right. Has anyone else fought this battle?"

Papa Legba asks: "I am in a battle, with a now ex-employer, over the unpaid overtime that I incurred while working in their IT department. I refused to accept the answer 'you are a computer guy, you don't get overtime' and did some looking. My research has turned up these relevant documents: the definition of exempt Computer professional at section 13(a)(17) of the FLSA managed by the Department of Labor, the amendments in the ESA labeled C.F.R.541.3(a)(4) and C.F.R.541.303 , and a site referring to a letter, which I cannot find a copy of. The letter describes a Dept. of Labor ruling from December 4, 1998 that set out who qualifies as a computer professional. Can anyone find this letter, and is there any more documents that I am missing. I have a lawyer but this is a very specific area and I want to do this right. Has anyone else fought this battle?"

Chope writes "In the flurry of end-of-term US Supreme Court decisions, some may have overlooked a case the Court agreed to take for the term beginning in the fall 2003. The Court is finally going to consider the ramifications of government requests for and subsequent disclosure of your social security number. The law in question is the 1974 Privacy Act, which places restrictions on how the government (federal, state, and local) can request individuals' SSNs. A good source of background information is Chris Hibbert's SSN FAQ and his Privacy Act Background. While the Privacy Act put bounds on the when and how the SSN may be requested and also required the government to protect the information collected, the Privacy Act established no penalties if the government failed to protect the data. The Court will decide if individuals must prove they were harmed in order to receive compensation, or if the government's mere (?!) release of information is sufficient grounds to award damages. The story, an AP wire by Gina Holland, appeared in today's (28-June-2003) Portland Oregonian but doesn't yet appear on their website. Google isn't returning much at this point, either. The Supreme Court's website has only the barest information. The case is Doe (pseudonym) v. Chao, docket 02-1377. Doe was a coal miner who's SSN was used by the state of Virginia to track Black Lung disease cases. Virginia later published reports of the cases, including the SSNs. The 4th Circuit ruled against Doe in October 2002."