By Andrea Buenrostro, Courier Staff Writer
The US. Department of Labor (DoL) has made accusations of a gender wage gap in one of the biggest companies of today’s age: Google.
An investigation on the company conducted by the DoL found that Google was violating employment laws. There was evidence of discrimination towards women by not paying them the same salary as men. Even in the most common positions, they found that women were still getting paid less than men. They then proceeded to file a lawsuit against the tech industry. Janette Wipper, DoL regional director, told the court that the government had uncovered “systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.” Google is supposed to let the DoL inspect its employment data and records under equal opportunity laws because they are a federal contractor, but last year they denied the request.
Google has denied these accusations, claiming that they do not have a gender wage gap. In the Guardian, Google stated, “We vehemently disagree with [Wipper’s] claim. Every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap. Other than making an unfounded statement which we heard for the first time in court, the DoL hasn’t provided any data, or shared its methodology.”
This is not the first time such a situation has occurred. Other giant companies, like Palantir and Oracle, have evidence against them from the DoL, of their data that show they too have a wage gap between not only men and women, but between people of different races as well
The lawsuit has been filed since last January however the future of DoL working on enforcing the law against gender wage gap does not look well. President Trump has rolled back the protection for female workers under Obama-era order.