Four women who worked at Google are representing (by court order) 10,800 former employees, also women, in a lawsuit against the company. The female employees accuse Google of pay gender. These employees held various positions at the tech giant since 2013: engineers, program managers, salespeople, etc.
See also: Google will pay $3.8 million for discrimination
The plaintiffs, who are seeking more than $600 million in damages, allege that Google violated California’s equal pay law by paying them less than male employees in the same positions at the company. They also required women to work longer to get promoted, and promotions for women were generally less frequent. According to the lawsuit, female employees at Google earn about $16,800 less than a “comparably positioned man.
See also: Color of Change: Investigate Google for racial discrimination
Google, for its part, said it denies the main allegations in the lawsuit. The original lawsuit, which was filed by Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri in 2017, was dismissed by a judge before being refiled the following year by another plaintiff, Heidi Lamar. Now, the four women have been granted permission to represent all other employees wronged by Google.
These incidents are, unfortunately, common, as various studies show. A few days ago, such a study was published by the recruitment platform Hired, which showed that wage inequalities still exist in the technology industry. Those who are mainly wronged are women and people of color.
Learn more: Technology: Women and people of color get lower wages
The CEO of Hired said this needs to change and stressed that: “Employees in the tech industry today expect to be compensated based on their value without discrimination based on gender or race.”
Source: Engadget
