Despite Google’s claims that it had managed to close the gender-pay gap globally, the US labor department today testified against the company in court, alleging that there were systematic pay inequities at the company. The allegations com even as there has been a public moment against workplace harassment and inequality at giant corporations.
Speaking on the topic, Department of Labor Regional Director Janette Wipper said:
We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.
The department went on to slam that Google was particularly biased with regards to the salary it paid to its female employees. Google has rubbished all these claims and has cited the internal evaluations it conducts every year to ensure that just such an occurrence does not take place. The company also went on to question the Department of labor’s methodology, and the data it had used to reach the conclusion.
The tiff between the search engine behemoth and the Department of labor isn’t exactly new. In January, the department sued Google in an attempt to force the company to give it access to employee data. The department of labor had at that time said that it was seeking the data as part of a routine compliance evaluation. The company had refused to comply with a similar request made by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs in 2015.
As for the why, well, Google is a federal contractor. Granting a company that doesn’t comply with its rules and regulations contracts wouldn’t really be best practice on the government’s part, which is why it reviews compensation data among other things of all of the federal contractors — a list which includes Google.
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs had said that if Google refused to provide the information it required, it would ask the courts to cancel all the federal contracts received by Google. The company on the other hand, insists that it has already provided all the information that could be relevant to that particular investigation.
