Oracle Systematically Underpaid Thousands of Women, Lawsuit Says (theguardian.com)

Thousands of women were systematically underpaid at Oracle, one of Silicon Valley's largest corporations, according to a new motion in a class-action complaint that details claims of pervasive wage discrimination. From a report: A motion filed in California on Friday said attorneys seek to represent more than 4,200 women and alleged that female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work. An analysis of payroll data found disparities with an "extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance," the complaint said. Women made 3.8% less in base salaries on average than men in the same job categories, 13.2% less in bonuses, and 33.1% less in stock value, it alleges.

The civil rights suit comes as the tech industries faces increased scrutiny of gender and racial discrimination, including sexual misconduct, unequal pay and biased workplaces. The case against Oracle, which is headquartered in Redwood Shores and provides cloud computing services to companies across the globe, resembles high-profile litigation against Google, which has also faced repeated claims of systematic wage discrimination.

Comments

Re: Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Do single, childless men who don't miss work to take care of sick kids get extra pay? No. In my experience people with kids are granted a HUGE amount of leeway taking time off while if a childless worker were to ask for similar accommodations/time off they would be shown the door. Having children is a choice and an opportunity cost is exactly what it is and should be.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[sjames]

You flunk statistics.

IF those studies are valid, they would show that you might find fewer women at a given level of inclination, but those you did find would be just as good as their male counterparts.

Re:put a sock in it

[q_e_t]

And just like no woman ever thought of going to the moon no woman has ever thought anything like "How do I conduct a study and present the results effectively for the study on infectious diseases?" or "Radium - how does that work?" or "I wonder what the structure of DNA is", or "What do those signals from outer space mean?". Oh, my bad, they have.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[cayenne8]

Irrelevant. It is illegal to pay men and women systematically differently based on any other criteria but job performance. Unless they are salespeople or professional negotiators, paying them differently based on "ability to negotiate" is illegal.

Well, how do you propose it works then?

I mean, I don't really know of any company, that pays everyone with same job title exactly the same.

Employee 1 comes in, and negotiates to work for the company for $50K a year.

Employee 2 comes in and negotiates to work for the company for $45K a year.

Employee 3 comes in and negotiates to work for the company for $55K a year.

All employees are hired one with the salary they agreed to....

That's how it works.

So all 3 employees work for years there, each getting a 5% raise each year.

Alll things being equal, the person that negotiated the best salary, will always be paid the most.

Now, what if employee 2, valued themselves the least starting out...who's fault is that?

If that was a woman, she'll always be paid less than 1 an 3.

Let's say 1 and 3 are both men.

Well, #3 will always be paid more than #1.....

So, where's the discrimination there? There is none.

The company wants to get as much work out of you for the least amount of money, that's how it works, and it is up to YOU as the individual to negotiate to get the best deal you can for yourself and to know your self worth, etc.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[AmiMoJo]

When negotiating with new hires or handing our raises, the company needs to consider other employee's pay as well. If some candidates are undervaluing themselves then they need to offer them more money anyway, simple as that.

ShanghaiBill is right, trying to argue "she was a worse negotiator in the interview!" isn't a legally valid excuse and won't get you off the hook.