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Google Accused of 'Extreme' Gender Pay Discrimination By US Labor Department (theguardian.com)

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.

3 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Also, statistics are strange. More = fewer by raymorris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are many factors that affect these things. Asking for a raise is one factor among many.

    The government once sued a university for gender discrimination because they accepted a significantly higher percentage of male students than female. It was a pretty clear case, they accepted something like 60% of male applicants and 40% of female applicants. Here's the weird thing - every department at the school accepted a higher rate of female students. For any given program at the school, women were *more* likely to be accepted than men. At first, that might seem mathematically impossible. Here's how it happened:

    The school's crown jewel was its very highly regarded nursing* program. It had some other departments too, but the school was known for the nursing program. The nursing program had a lot more applicants than the available slots. Most people who applied to the nursing program weren't accepted. Also, most people who applied for the nursing program were female.

    Therefore, most women weren't accepted, even though the nursing program and every other program at the school were biased toward admitting a higher percentage of female applicants than male applicants. Males just didn't tend to apply for the nursing program as much, and that was the program that had the most competitive admissions.

    Statistics are strange sometimes.

  2. Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss by Hylandr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am a man, and have done this for my family. My contract was not renewed for 'poor attendance' with a fortune 100 company in Portland. This feedback was not shared with me until after I had left.

    It's not that we don't want to, we aren't *allowed* to.

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
  3. Re:Everyone didn't by Hylandr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a lot of things wrong with your statement:

    1. The 'majority' of those votes weren't more than the margin of error.
    2. The recounts that Jill Stein initiated became silent as soon as the recount was showing in Trumps favor.
    3. The electoral college was created to prevent 'ivory towers' from dictating the vote over the rest of the nation.
    4. The Internet and the 'social' media that exists there only accounts for a small percentage of the voting population and not representative of any demographic as a whole.

    And honestly if you really want to end slavery then you need to join a military and fight Islam. They are the ones selling people *today*. It's Illegal in the 'Western' world and has been for generations. It's alive and well in the middle east.

    Please get some perspective.

    Our forefathers were far more educated and experienced in the ways of the world than all the young-adults in America today put together. When I was young and stupid I thought like you. Now that I have a family, job and certain responsibilities I see the wisdom that went into creating America. Without the revisionist history or the altruistic ideology that I learned doesn't work. You kids have some nice ideas, but you should spend more time off the Internet learning what makes people tick.

    Good luck out there.

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.