Googles will pay $118 million to female staff who earned less than their male colleagues to settle the lawsuit.
Source: Yahoo Finance
This week, court documents reveal how Alphabet Inc’s Google agreed to pay $118 million to more than 15,500 employees. This is the settlement of a long-running lawsuit regarding allegations of gender discrimination, as well as pay equity at the company.
The details were disclosed in a press release this week by the plaintiffs’ law firms, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernsteon and Altshuler Berzon. He outlined how this settlement covers female workers in approximately 236 job titles in the state of California since September 14, 2013.
The female staff are said to have worked in different divisions and levels, with their average pay amounting to around $7,600. The lawsuit filed in September 2017 is followed by this particular agreement. The lawsuit was filed by former company employees Holly Pease, Kelly Ellis, Heidi Lamar and Kelli Wisuri.
The original lawsuit detailed how Lamar, a preschool teacher at the search giant’s children’s center, was paid $18.51 an hour. Significantly, this contrasted with a male counterpart receiving $21 an hour who had less qualifications and comparatively less experience.
Additional charges:
Last year, Google was accused of paying its female staff $17,000 less each year than male employees who even held the same position, in the same lawsuit. They were originally looking for around $600 million. As the filing details, the settlement includes the provision of an independent industrial organizational psychologist to analyze hiring practices, as well as the search giant’s pay equity.
One of the former employees, Kelly Ellis, was a software engineer for about four years at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View. She said she hopes this agreement will mark a turning point in the company’s practices.
On the other hand, former employee Holly Pease made a statement about it. She said that as a woman who had spent her entire “career in the tech industry”, she was “optimistic that the actions ‘the search giant agreed to take in the matter would ensure’ more equity for women”. She added how Google has “led the tech industry” since its inception and has the opportunity to “lead change” to ensure inclusion and “equity for women in tech.”
A preliminary approval hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, June 21. The tech giant has not acknowledged any requests for comment on the situation at this time.
