Four women suing Google for pay discrimination just had their lawsuit upgraded to a $600m class action A lawsuit spearheaded by four female Google ex-employees claiming the ad giant pays men higher wages for doing the same job was granted class-action status this week. On Thursday, Judge Andrew Cheng of the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, said [PDF] the plaintiffs – Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, Kelli Wisuri, and …
The women might accept the lower salaries, but there are too few of them applying to fill all positions. Note that Google also sued for discriminating against men when hiring. Then again, they also got sued in a third lawsuit for discriminating against women.
Considering they have over 100k employees, they have plenty of opportunities to discriminate against a lot of people...
Considering they have over 100k employees
that's where the arguments for/against it being systemic come in. With that many employees, you would think the law of averages would compensate for, let's say, a lack of women in the sales force who aren't on "the sales ladder" track [or whatever they called it] but throughout the REST of the company it's "ok" [let's say].
Having ONLY MEN on the "sales force" track is compelling enough, at least for that part of the business, but if they made up for it (or explained it well enough, like 'too few applicants' etc.), then Google might have a defense against "this one case" with the promise to "handle it internally" and avoid the class action penalties, i.e. "The rest of the business is 'ok'" or "move along nothing to see here." That's the best outcome for Google I'd think.
However, past performance suggests that they DO have systemic promotion-related (and other) discrimination problems, as indicated by some of the other claims mentioned in the article, as well as past lawsuits, etc..
"It's Hedley Lamar, not Hedi...."
Well, understandable...
Were probably subconsciously thinking of Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), great movie star, inventor, and the mother of frequency hopping in modern wifi/ Bluetooth. Another great female contribution not recognised...
"even though she helped other employees pass technical interviews to get onto more senior technical positions, managers told her she 'lacked technical ability' "
Sorry, if you're using someone to review technical interviews, you cannot say that they are lacking in technical ability. That would mean that you are the idiot using people lacking in technical ability to conduct technical interviews.
@AC "4 women just lost the chance of any reasonable compensation. " I agree
Do the people suing have a choice do they have to accept it being a class action or can they continue as a non-class action case?
Who asked for class action status the four women suing their lawyers or is class action status something the judge can just assign?
If the four women suing did not ask for it then either their lawyers are not acting in their clients’ best interests or the judge is doing them a disservice.
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As a grey beard, it appears to me the underlying problem is an overall lack of ethics and morals in Silly Valley as many are in court being sued for discrimination, unlawful firing, etc. If you try to treat everyone the same and with dignity and respect many of these suits will disappear, the aggrieved not aggrieved. Often the suits reflect there is pervasive mistreatment of staff by manglement as only a fraction who could will sue. The fact that enough people have a decent enough case to make this far should be a wake up call to manglement. The question is not the existence of a suit but number and scope of the suits. Some suits will be dubious attempts to 'get even' but there will be some that are genuine and point to more pervasive problem. As the number of suits increases the more likely any given suit is legitimate.
But the other side is equally true: it's easier to claim discrimination than it is to up your tech skills. I'm not saying that these founders are saints (they most definitely are not), but the validity of the claims needs to be carefully scrutinized.
In the 80's, the big thing was redlining: the claim that banks were refusing to lend in certain zip codes because they were "too black" or some such. The problem is that if this were the case, it would be easy to set up a bank targeting lending to such an area--it should clean up, right? Or, you know, hold press conferences, organize demonstrations, pass federal laws & regulations.....
This is the same. You ever see or hear about some late-stage startup proclaiming that it's going to hire all those underemployed women? No? It that because *each* and *every* startup is headed by nasty men? Sure....
and I'll say it again. I was at Google 2015-2016. This lawsuit, especially as a class action, is total ********. Google obsessed over hiring & promotion. It came up in every vaguely casual conversation. It was usually the first topic of a causal conversation with a manager. They actively ran experiments on the process. One of the things that they specifically worried over was that women were underpaid or under-compensated.
On day, someone actually ran the numbers. Oops. Women were paid slightly more than the equivalent male counterparts. Which was only a surprise to people who don't understand bounded random walks.
One of the differences between men and women is that men value their income more, while women value quality of life more. The implications don't make for easy sloganeering.
They have >100k employees, which is easily enough to have some women who were treated unfairly. It's even enough to have a few pockets were women are systematically treated unfairly, despite all the ostensible efforts from the top to root out issues.
So it's well possible that these women have grounds for complaining how they were treated, but it's a very different question to claim that the issues are company-wide... And I would assume that the company have carefully documented their efforts.
Google might still decide to settle just to make the lawsuit go away, though. It's often cheaper than paying the lawyers.
Maybe I read it to fast, but the plaintiffs seem to base their case in comparing educational degrees and seniority over actual skills or performance descriptions (not just marks).
If as an entrepreneur (will be in 2 months) I am forced to value more seniority and degrees over actual skills I see myself doomed to fail.
I don't doubt there are women paid less than men.
But I want to see & compare qualifications. I want to see & compare skill sets. Show me why you think you deserve to be paid as much as the next person, male or female.
You might have the same job title, but your higher paid coworker may have 5 years of experience and a degree you don't know about, so they asked for more and got it based on those qualifications. If you don't have the 5 years of experience and the degree, you don't get paid as much. That isn't discrimination, sexism, etc. That's common sense and standard business practices.
I've hired and fired many people. I negotiate salary explicitly based on your education and prior experience. I don't give a fook what's between your legs. If a guy comes in with the extra experience, he's going to get paid more than the woman. If the woman comes in with extra experience, she gets paid more. It's really, really basic stuff.
And it seems time and time again, when we see these cases, the men tend to be much more qualified than the women not being paid the same. I am not going to pay someone with 5 years of experience the same rate that I'll pay someone with 10.
@NicX
"But I want to see & compare qualifications. I want to see & compare skill sets. Show me why you think you deserve to be paid as much as the next person, male or female."
The scary thing I see with demands for the same pay for the same job is how qualifications are assumed to put you on a level peg as someone else. 2 people as you say can have the same qualifications but different skill sets.
Although sometimes it really just is someone being a dick
With all this talk of ladders, and experience (Length of service) based pay, rather than performance, and responsibility; I suspect a few lawyers will already be Googling for the most expensive consumer items they can buy on this old interweb, in advance of an age discrimination, class action.
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