Department of Labor Sues Google Over Compensation Data (cnn.com)

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."

Comments

TFA missed two.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

Missed two biggies:

Age.
National origin.

Re: TFA missed two.

[ooloorie]

National origin can somewhat be described by race

Not even close. Being British, French, Spanish, or South African tells you little about the US notion of "race" or "ethnicity".

(And the fact that the US government even has official definitions of racial categories is an outrage.)

Re: TFA missed two.

[Anonymous Coward]

National origin can somewhat be described by race

Hah. I was born in Joburg and have been an American citizen more than 20 years. I'm white as the day is long but I mark "African American" everywhere I can. I'm sure they've got me lumped in with the blacks on the national rolls.

Re: TFA missed two.

[dgatwood]

And bureaucrats everywhere are torn between the desire to chastise you for screwing up their numbers or praise you for being technically correct—the best kind of correct....

Re: TFA missed two.

[Pinky's Brain]

Hard to do affirmative action without defining race.

Re: TFA missed two.

[silentcoder]

Don't be so sure. Hell South Africa managed to do appartheid without having race defined !
I'm not kidding you. They went through about 6 different attempts to define it in the early days - and ultimately settled on "you are a member of the race of which the community and culture accepts you as a member" - and had individual cases of dispute left up to judges who would rule when there were issues based on collecting a whole lot of personal data and witness statements from neighbours and the like.

In a few cases coloureds (the South African term 'coloured' means "mixed race" - it's more like what Americans once called "Mulatos") managed to cross the line and become legally white for example, and at least a few white people who lived in areas bordering coloured populations ended up being legally included in that race group. Oddly though there was the case of Johnny Clegg. Clegg was white-born in a Zulu area and fully and utterly adoped Zulu culture, and was accepted as a Zulu by the local tribe. Despite years of attempts though - he could never get legally classified as Zulu. Clegg is also one the best-selling musicians in the country's history so his case became very well publicised.

In 1986, in a desperate attempt to try and keep the system on life support the government instituted a number of reforms -believing they could keep the foundational appartheid system running if they curb the worst of it's excesses. These reforms got rid of several of the most racist laws and in some truly bizarre ways at times. For example it scrapped the immorality act (which prohibited sex or marriage across colour lines) but kept the group areas act - which meant that while you could now marry somebody of a different race, legally you and your new spouse could not live together !

But one of those reforms completely scrapped racial classification and definition. The 1986 election was the last true whites-only election in the country in fact, and had there been another appartheid election it would have been very hard to keep black people from voting since legally they didn't exist anymore. That they somehow managed to keep the segregation laws going while not legally classifying people at all made it all rather surreal - even by appartheid government standards. They also insituted a new tricameral parliament. The two additional houses of parliament had one which ruled over coloured affairs and one which ruled over Indian affairs (no representation for black's still - despite being 80% of the population) and they had no real power anyway as the white-chamber could veto any law they passed.
This was the beginning of the end of the system anyway. The government grew ever more paranoid and the country was effectively in a never-ending state of emergency. Always quite censorious and masters of propaganda it got stepped up to never before seen levels and even flagrant dishonesty - the government fought a ten year war in Angola while denying to the population that it was at war at all ! It was "just guarding the border of Namibia" it said... this was a bit of an open secret though - you can't have thousands of soldiers serving and coming home without some of them talking about where they really were.

That president P.W. Botha basically went crazier and crazier - and after a minor health-scare in 1989 the party essentially held a coup from the inside, claiming he had, had a severe stroke they removed him from office before he could wipe the shit from his eyes and gave the presidency to F.W. De Klerk who abolished all remaining appartheid laws, freed Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners and announced a negotiation process to ultimately lead to elections in a unified South Africa where all could vote - all in his very first speech (February 29, 1989).

There was one last desperate attempt to ressurrect the system. In 1992 the rightwing parties (who held a considerable number of parliamentary seats) were clamoring that the National Party had no right to end the system, negotiate with the ANC (and other

Re:TFA missed two.

[thunderclees]

New data reveals that 86% of the total H1B visas issued in 2014 for technology firms was used to hire IT professionals from India. The data accessed by Computerworld through Right of Information Act, reveals that a lion share of visas issued for computer jobs are claimed by Indians.

So obviously there is categorical information for national origin and the H1B programs need more diversity...

If CEOs insist that middle class Americans compete with cheap foreign labor, why not outsource the jobs of CEOs? If business is all about cost, they should be the first to volunteer.— Lou Dobbs, CNN financial correspondent and author of Exporting America (September 2004)

Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[taustin]

Can't they?

Google, the company running the most all-pervasive surveillance system in all of human history, is fighting to protect their own privacy?

Not that I needed another belly laugh, after the last election, but dude, that's funny.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaywardGeek]

I've work for Google for 2 years now. Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else? Google fights harder than any company I know of against government over-reach and invasion of privacy (though kudos to Apple recently, other than that NYT app in China thing). I don't know any details, and IANAL, but this feels to me like Google is looking out for our privacy rather than trying to hide hiring practices. Do you want to give your details to these investigators? Why not anonymize the data? I see almost zero non-anonymous data at Google. The government should learn a few of these tricks.

As for "all-pervasive surveillance", Google does collect huge amounts of data, but after two years of trying pretty hard to test Google's defenses against internal employee hacking, I have to give Google an A+. I can't help but to poke at every weakness I see - it's a personality flaw. I personally have not seen 1 byte of user data that I did not need to do my job, and I am easily in the top 1% of nosy Googlers. My son told me once, "You love to be evil for good". That's how I feel about testing defenses. There is always room for improvement, and I think we're trying hard to improve, but no other company on earth comes close to protecting user data like Google does today.

As for discriminating against women, older folks, etc... well, we're a company made up of humans, just like the rest. There's room for improvement. Before working here, I worked primarily in FPGA place and route algorithms, which is a field with AFAIK exactly zero women. Please let me know if I'm wrong, and managers don't count, I mean the actual algorithms geeks. I read somewhere that we only employ something close to 15% women in engineering/software jobs, but when I look around, I see closer to 30% women. It might just be my group, but I think we try pretty hard to expunge 1960's Star Trek inspired sexist attitudes. As a 53-year-old, I have to try pretty hard to try and eliminate unconscious biases - which is hard! I don't know of any other company that demands this of older engineers like me. It's a very good thing.

Anyway, I'm guessing you don't really know what goes on at Google, but this is Slashdot. Stating strong opinions about that which we know nothing about is what we do here...

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[LetterRip]

I've work for Google for 2 years now. Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else?

It is a legal requirement to in order to get any federal contracts. As part of the contract they are required to prove compliance with equal opportunity laws. They have the contracts, so they are required to abide by the terms.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[tlhIngan]

I've work for Google for 2 years now. Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else? Google fights harder than any company I know of against government over-reach and invasion of privacy (though kudos to Apple recently, other than that NYT app in China thing). I don't know any details, and IANAL, but this feels to me like Google is looking out for our privacy rather than trying to hide hiring practices. Do you want to give your details to these investigators? Why not anonymize the data? I see almost zero non-anonymous data at Google. The government should learn a few of these tricks.

Easy. The contract demands it. Google sells their services to the government (cloud services, it seems like). However, to do that, the government doesn't just go "Sign Up" for an account. They're actually not allowed to just use a solution without contest - they must procure the service through a competition.

So they put out a RFP for what services they need, and in those quotes, they then select a proposal and then send out a whole set of contract documents that you have to agree to. And one of those would to be provide a whole pile of personnel information on demand.

Since Google refuses to abide by the contract, the DoL has the right to request a contract termination because Google has technically breached it.

The "right" of the government to get the data was given by Google when Google signed the contract.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

For most federal government contracts, it is indeed that simple. A clause in the contract stipulates that you'll allow an audit for compliance with labor laws. It's pretty universal. I obviously haven't seen Google's contract, but it would be strange to not have it.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaffleMonster]

As for "all-pervasive surveillance", Google does collect huge amounts of data, but after two years of trying pretty hard to test Google's defenses against internal employee hacking, I have to give Google an A+. I can't help but to poke at every weakness I see - it's a personality flaw. I personally have not seen 1 byte of user data that I did not need to do my job, and I am easily in the top 1% of nosy Googlers. My son told me once, "You love to be evil for good". That's how I feel about testing defenses. There is always room for improvement, and I think we're trying hard to improve, but no other company on earth comes close to protecting user data like Google does today.

NSA offers roughly the same message only they claim collecting data doesn't actually count as "collecting" until it has been used. They are basically asserting it isn't what you have it is what you do with what you take that counts.

This doesn't work for money stolen in bank heists or scams, exfiltration of confidential data such as trade and government secrets. It doesn't seem rational to believe any judge anywhere would accept the line of argument you didn't use what you took as a defense...

NSA brass even makes public statements about all of their safeguards and red tape... at least when they are not undermining themselves by publically gloating about their power and exploits.

Anyway, I'm guessing you don't really know what goes on at Google, but this is Slashdot. Stating strong opinions about that which we know nothing about is what we do here...

Personally speaking for myself I just don't care. Just like NSA collecting data domestically such assertions of being careful and self-limiting completely misses the point it's simply none of Google's business in the first place.

Massive corporations (especially ones with a defacto monopoly) and governments always try to sell the idea they are somehow different or special insulated from historical examples of human nature. They want us to believe they won't overreach or leverage themselves in pursuit of their objective functions. I am not interested in debating this point or characterizing anyone as good or evil.

I am only interested in promotion of structures which hold EVERYONES feet to the fire. This means a few massive companies like Google don't get to go ape shit and read everyone's email and track everyone's every move across virtually every website on the planet whether Google is their search engine or not.

This behind the scenes industrial scale spying relies mostly on ignorance and lack of choice. All of this data ultimately isn't being used for everyone's benefit it is being used to give corporations an upper hand over consumers -- an unfair advantage, an unfair playing field. They don't want *their* feet burnt.

Hopefully soon with increasing public awareness, certain hidden technological changes and possibly legislation there will be adjustments to better balance things out. The status quo is unsustainable and Google is at the forefront of being the problem.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaywardGeek]

Yep. It isn't so bad in Mountain View, but have you been to SF lately? It isn't just Google. The entire SF hipster startup culture in SF is highly youth-oriented, and I worry that the culture may be more sexist than what we've seen in the Bay Area since the 1960s. What happens when you give a bunch of 20-year-old men a lot of money, and a great dating scene with far more single women then men?

In any case, there are some good reasons for Google's preference for hiring people right out of college. I am still recovering from culture-shock. It would have been far easier for me to have gone to work for Google without having worked for startups for 25 years. When I see stupid stuff that I can fix, I feel compelled to fix it. That works well in small companies, but it will only piss off people at Google, and ensure you get a poor review. I advise nooglers with experience like me to try and ignore what that they learned before.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Google refuses to abide by the contract, the DoL has the right to request a contract termination because Google has technically breached it.

They Dept of labor is not suing to terminate the contract though. They are suing to get private information which, after it is in their hands, can be used by any government department. And this information is MORE than what the IRS would get. Getting salary history and career history essentially means information on how people moved from position to position. This would give the government information on which projects each Google employee ever worked on and their phone numbers (which IRS may not have), street addresses, and probably all email aliases (which IRS definitely did not have). And this is the government which sold state influence secrets to unfriendly nations. So Google is within their rights to question their motives.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[MachineShedFred]

from the fucking summary:

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."

Don't be an apologist.

Why did it come to this

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not understand why google has not complied. I get it if they do not like the request, I wouldn't like it either, but they signed for those contracts and agreed to these terms so they could get paid.

Quite frankly at a certain point an example needs to be made.

I see this kind of disregard for the law and for contracts etc and it's getting much worse. We need to publicly kill a large corporation, and we need to do it in a very messy painful way. We need to do this to bring the others into line.

Sun Tsu's art of war dictates that a general must publicly execute one of his men so the others fall in line. We need to kill sony for infecting multiple countries with rootkits, or subway for poisoning our population, or walmart for actively encouraging child slave labor, or google for failing to comply with legal contractual obligations.

One must die that we may all live, this is the way of the harvest and we know it, now we just have to pick one to kill by revoking their corporate charter and disassembling their physical business structures.

Re:Why did it come to this

[Anonymous Coward]

You're referring to azodicarbonamide. Azodicarbonamide has GRAS status in the US and is legally allowed to be added to flour as a bleaching agent at up to 45 ppm (it also helps bread to rise when heated). It thermally decomposes into harmless byproducts, and other than exposure to large amounts of the powder which has been linked to asthma (but what particulate hasn't) is perfectly safe. Subway did nothing wrong by including it, and in fact, over 400 foods from a bunch of other companies include it as well. I'm perfectly fine with publically executing a company for legal violations to prove a point, but Subway is not one of them. If you want to kill an evil food company, lets go after Nestle.

Google's response

[SnowZero]

TFS should have included Google's response (already in TFA):

“We’ve worked hard to comply with the OFCCP’s current audit. However, the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we've made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail. These requests include thousands of employees’ private contact information which we safeguard rigorously. We hope to continue working with OFCCP to resolve this matter.”

Re:Google's response

[BlueStrat]

" These requests include thousands of employeesâ(TM) private contact information which we safeguard rigorously"

Doesn't fucking matter. For tax purposes, these things MUST be known. ZERO EXCUSE.

Umm, the IRS is not requesting the data. This isn't about taxes, it's about hiring quotas and affirmative-action compliance. The IRS has all the employees' contact info necessary for tax purposes.

This sounds more like a politically-correct witch hunt on the part of the government. Maybe I'm wrong, I await proof that contradicts it.

Strat

Re:ridiculous

[hawguy]

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

I think it is utterly ridiculous for the government to force companies to keep track of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. That is personal information that is neither the employer's business nor the federal government's.

People should either refuse to answer such questions or simply make up answers.

If the government doesn't require companies to track on report on these, then how can the government prevent discrimination based on those attributes? It's exceptionally hard for an employee who feels he was discriminated against to prove such discrimination, especially if, as you suggest, employers aren't even required to track it.

Not Equal Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday to get the Internet company to turn over compensation data on its employees. [...] 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.

And how exactly does providing data on employees prove that they do not discriminate against applicants? Oh, that's right, it isn't about equality of opportunity, it's about equality of results. I forgot.

It's the right time!

[hcs_$reboot]

If you're over 50 years old and looking for a job at Google , apply now!

Re:ridiculous

[ooloorie]

The government doesn't force anyone to do this. What they do is make it part of any government contract, if you want to work for the government you must agree to these regulations

Yes, and I am saying that it is wrong for government to collect this data on anybody. It simply isn't the government's business who I like to sleep with or what "race" I am. And storing that information in government databases is creepy and dangerous.

(that were put in place by congress long before Obama took office)

Did I mention Obama anywhere? The American obsession with categorizing people by race obviously goes back to the founding of the US. People have always found rationalizations for it, how it is good for everybody, how it is necessary for justice and the correct functioning of society. But in the end, these categorizations are, have always been, and will always be racist, discriminatory, and harmful to everybody.

Re:Yeah, this will last about 2 weeks

[swb]

You're making jokes about this, but how do we know that this isn't exactly what Google is most worried about?

I mean, if you were going to just hazard a wild guess based on the usual stereotypes you'd figure Google skews young and male in engineering but does better overall in gender when marketing and other soft skills positions are included. You could talk to anyone in technology and get this same mix described to you like the people involved were talking about the weather or the sun rising in the East. Just the way it is.

But when it comes to race and national origin, I'd guess they skew heavily Indian and Asian but extremely light on blacks.

That's a bad combination for this zeitgeist. Not hiring enough blacks exposes you to all the usual discrimination claims and I'm sure BLM would love a target like Google.

But the real zinger will be the heavy hiring of Indians and Chinese and they don't want Trump ranting on Twitter (a competing service!) about how they're not hiring Americans.

And if Trump had half a brain, he'd say that part of why blacks are doing poorly was that Google was hiring Indians over them. It's ludicrous, I know, but it's political genius because it deflects Trump's alt-right image and it pits blacks against Indians. It's classic divide and conquer.

You're misapplying Sun Tzu

[MikeRT]

Sun Tsu's art of war dictates that a general must publicly execute one of his men so the others fall in line.

Going after the company is not an application of that idea, an application of Roman decimation or any equivalent concept of punishing someone pour encourager les autres. You want to make sphincters pucker here? Real simple. Hold the executive(s) responsible personally. Pierce the corporate veil and go after them directly for ordering non-compliance.

Re:Evil

[TheRaven64]

I think the new version is 'Don't. Be evil.'