Google has an extreme gender pay gap, US government says

Google has an extreme gender pay gap, US government saysGoogle has an extreme gender pay gap, US government saysThe Department of Labor accused Google of an extreme gender pay gap and said it had found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.The allegations came Friday in a San Francisco courtroom. What makes this especially awkward is that just days earlier, Google said it had closed the gender pay gap globally for all of its employees.In fact, Google said it had solved the gender pay gap so well that it welches teaching other companies to do the same.Ladders has reached out to Google for comment and well update when we get a response.How it all went downThe allegations came to light as part of an ongoing lawsuit that the U.S. government filed against Google in January. The government wanted toaccess Googles salary data and other personnel records as part of a scheduled compliance review to make sure Google was following equal employme nt laws.Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so, the government complained.We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs said back in January.Because Google is a federal contractor, the government requires the company to file salary compensation data.But Google refused to hand that information over, saying the governments request was overbroad and revealed too much confidential data about its employees.Fast-forward to April 7, and the Department of Laboris testifying that it has the receipts for Googles alleged discriminatory behavior.Labor officialJanette Wipper told the courtroomthat the DoL had found systemic compensation disparities in a 2015 snapshot of salaries it got and it wanted Google to give the government earlier data to understand how long this had been happening. Google refuted the DoLs allegations, telling the Guardian that it did an annual internal audit and had not found any gender pay gap.The Labor Departments crusade against tech companies discriminationThe Labor Department has been aggressively enforcing Silicon Valley in recent months.In January, the Labor Department sued Oracle, accusing the software company of paying white men mora than other employees with the same job title. It also accused Oracle of hiring discrimination, saying that the company favoredAsian applicants over non-Asians for technical roles.Meanwhile, Palantir was sued by the government in October for the opposite problem the Labor Department said Palantir was discriminating against Asian applicants in its hiring and referral practices.The risk that all of these companies face is that if they lose their cases, they lose their lucrative federal contracts. But thats the extra scrutiny these companies deserve when theyre using public funds, the government says.Our nations taxpayers deserve to know that companies employed wit h public funds are providing equal opportunity for job seekers, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs said about Palantirs suit.A former Google employees popular salary spreadsheetThis is not the first time someone has sounded the alarm to Googles pay gaps. Erica Baker, a former Google employee, conducted a radical salary transparency experiment in 2015 to highlight the pay gaps at Google. Creating an internal spreadsheet, she got 5% of the companys employees to share their salaries and it directly led to people successfully negotiating for higher salaries.But it came at a personal cost to her, she alleged.At Google, one of the employee perks is that peers can send you $150 bonuses for good work. Google employees were sending Baker peer bonuses after she made the spreadsheet, but Bakers manager blocked all seven peer bonuses, she alleged.Google disputed Bakers account.Baker has moved on and is now a Slack engineer. When news of the Department of Labors findings came to light on Friday, she linked to the news and tweeted, Huh. How bout that.