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Labor Department Sues Oracle For Paying White Men More (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Oracle is being sued by the Labor Department for paying white men more than their counterparts and for favoring Asian workers when recruiting and hiring for technical roles. The administrative lawsuit is the latest from the Labor Department to take aim at the human resources practices of major technology companies. The Labor Department warned the lawsuit could cost Oracle hundreds of millions in federal contracts. Oracle makes software and hardware used by the federal government. "The complaint is politically motivated, based on false allegations, and wholly without merit," Oracle spokesman Deborah Hellinger said in a statement. "Oracle values diversity and inclusion, and is a responsible equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. Our hiring and pay decisions are non-discriminatory and made based on legitimate business factors including experience and merit." The lawsuit is the result of an Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs review of Oracle's equal employment opportunity practices, the Labor Department said. According to the lawsuit, Oracle America paid white male workers more, leading to pay discrimination against women, African American and Asian employees. The Labor Department also accused Oracle of favoring Asians for product development and other technical roles, resulting in discrimination against non-Asian applicants. Oracle refused to comply with the Labor Department's investigation, which began in 2014, such as refusing to provide compensation data for all employees, complete hiring data for certain business lines and employee complaints of discrimination, according to the federal agency.

17 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. So Oracle discriminated by Kartu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Against Asians, but at the same time, on different aspect, against everyone else in favor of Asians.
    That's quite discriminatory indeed, albeit, not quite logical.

    1. Re:So Oracle discriminated by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

      It seems they want to hire more Asians, BUT pay them less, for whatever reason or perception.

    2. Re:So Oracle discriminated by gurps_npc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is true that the article is written poorly, but Oracle is in fact discriminating against everybody. This is true of many companies.

      The way it works is simple:
      The managers are racist. They pay X group more - usually white men.

      But the company does not WANT to pay a lot of money. So the Hiring managers are told to actively find people that are not white men. Then they offer these hiring less money.

      To work like this it requires a wide spread racism among hiring companies combined with a slightly desperate population.

      Honestly, if they stop there, it's not that bad. They sift off the cream of desperate people, helping them out. Theoretically the company would end up dominated by the disadvantaged group.

      But it doesn't stop. What happens next is the real problem, internal discrimination.:

      When it comes time to promote people, they only promote the X group (white men). After all. those were the people getting paid the most and who, because of internal discrimination, were given both the best opportunities and the most credit.

      So you end up with a racist company paying X group more, while proudly proclaiming how many minorities they hire - even while they underpay them.

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    3. Re:So Oracle discriminated by ghoul · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Asians is code word for Indians. The key thing about Indians is the Indians coming to the US are coming from the top levels of Indian society. They are not used to being the underdog. Rather they are used to being the boss so they rise fast in a meritocracy as they do not have any hangups like US born minorities holding them back. Indians are also pretty racist. India itself has multiple ethnic groups and people favour their own ethnic group. When Indians get into hiring manager positions they hire Indians only as far as possible that too from their own ethnic group. They will hire a white if they cant get a sutable Indian. They will hardly ever hire a black or latino due to the Indian fetish for fair skin they thinks whites are smarter. However Indians dont discriminate between men and women when hiring. If Oracle is having mostly Asian aka Indian hires it means that Indians have reached middle management in Oracle and controlling the hiring. At the same time the old school whites still left are probably the critical folks or those who know where the skeletons are buried so they are paid far higher than the norm (In fact this whole case is probably because one of these folks felt they were not getting enough to keep shut about the skeletons)

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
    4. Re:So Oracle discriminated by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I worked at sun for about 5 years and was let go when oracle bought sun.

      I worked at the menlo park main campus. I am older than 50 and I'm white. during my 5 years there, I got good reviews and was the main guy for one of the products (software) that ships on sun servers.

      all you have to do is walk around the outside of any major silicon valley campus and you'll see the same thing over and over. yes, its mostly indian and we all know this, even though the media does not want to outright say it.

      and I'm 90% certain that I was let go because all the rest of my group was indian and I was making a good salary there.

      it happens to me at almost every place I'm at, these days. the inevitable firing when the numbers from the company go downward and they need a quick 'profit boost' by letting go of the senior and well-paid engineers. this rarely happens to the indians, though.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  2. Re:Schitzophrenic Labor Dept. by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's no contradiction in the two statements. The few white males they do hire are being given higher pay, but the majority of the jobs are going to lower-paid Asian workers.

  3. Bogus priorities by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oracle values diversity and inclusion

    That's bullshit. It ought to value their software's reliability and performance instead. Nothing else.

    If that means, hiring more (or less) Asians/Blacks/Whites/Purples — so be it.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  4. Are they counting personnel on H1B visas? by mmell · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Also - are they comparing current wages or starting wages? It's an unfortunate truth that many organizations have more Caucasian Males making more because they were hired back when companies could (and were even expected to) hire white men. This also accounts for (some of) the disparity in management roles.

    I'm sorry, but changing (or choosing to enforce) the current rules does not magically level the playing field. If it did, minorities would long ago have stopped complaining that the system is rigged against them. Then again, the situation I've just described does leave itself open to manipulation by the "good ol' boy's club".

    I'd be more interested in knowing if job tenure was considered in analyzing the pay differential that the DOL alleges they've discovered.

  5. would be more credible by superwiz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they filed before the election instead of the day before inauguration of a President from the opposing party. Once again, if Trump drops the suit, he is racist. If Trump wins the suit, it's Trump persecuting the tech sector while Obama protected minority rights. Who are these jokers kidding?

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  6. Re:White Power Rangers...ASSEMBLE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here we go...

    #OnlyBlackLivesMatter!

    The Democrat creed: We must promote intersectional bullshit in order to foment racial and ethnic tensions, divide the population into groups all trying to out-victim the other, then use that to stay in power in collusion with banksters. To make sure that works, we must excoriate any member of a victim class who dares to leave the thought plantation.

  7. I did by s.petry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The response is correct: "The complaint is politically motivated, based on false allegations, and wholly without merit."

    Merit is the biggest modifier in people's pay, and has been for decades. Equal opportunity has been the law several decades now. More women graduate college than men, and have been superior in terms of years of education for quite some time now. The Gender pay gap has been debunked so often that I honestly question the sanity of people who continue to argue that it exists. US Department of Labor data shows that women make more than men with the same qualifications and work habits, not less.

    Simple questions answer the issue easily. If women work for less than men, why does any company run by a man hire a man? I'm really tired of this leftist religion being crammed down everyone's throats. Yes, it has become a religion.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:I did by Raenex · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nobody has debunked the gender pay gap

      They debunked the myth that women were getting paid less than men for doing the same job.

    2. Re: I did by cryptizard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Your problem is that you think this all happens in a vacuum. If you are born in a neighborhood where half the houses are abandoned and you don't get consistent access to food, you won't have the luxury of making good life choices. It is a perpetuating cycle that started with slavery and continued with segregation. Tough to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can't afford shoes.

  8. Re:White Power Rangers...ASSEMBLE! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Republican creed: We must promote intersectional bullshit in order to foment racial and ethnic tensions, divide the population into groups all trying to out-victim the other, then use that to stay in power in collusion with banksters. To make sure that works, we must excoriate any member of a victim class who dares not to vote against their own interests.

    FTFY - AKA, The southern strategy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

  9. Re:Uh, can I apply now? by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

    [did I fit in all the alt-right cliches? if I missed any, let me know and I'll try again.]

    Only in showing that like most people in the left who subscribe to the PCness, claims of anti-hate speech, bigotry and so on. That you're perfectly fine in using it against anyone who doesn't follow your ideology.

    Haven't quite figured it out yet have you?

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  10. Re:White Power Rangers...ASSEMBLE! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Trump's popularity with white males was in no small part because he appealed to their sense of victimhood. Jobs stolen by immigrants, minorities given priority at their expense, constantly accused of being racist and sexist. It's standard alt-right doctrine, and the narrative running through everything of Breitbart which we know is Trump's favourite source of news (being a prolific tweeter has some benefits).

    That's the right's creed now. White men are oppressed, so should vote for a white male bigot like Trump who will look out for them. All progressive policies, all attempts to eliminate racism and sexism are just schemes to oppress white people and silence free speech, and the vast SJW army must be defeated by electing someone like Trump who doesn't give a shit about imitating disabled reporters or grabbing women by the genitals. The establishment itself is reverse-racist! Quick, appoint some white supremacists to his staff!

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Re:White Power Rangers...ASSEMBLE! by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know that Trump has four, that's right FOUR senior cabinet members who are ex-Goldman Sachs ? Tell me again how republicans don't suck bankster cock.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *