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Google lost a $118 million lawsuit for discriminating against female employees

Google must pay $118 million to resolve a class action lawsuit accusing the internet giant of discriminate against women through their salary and rank at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, in the United States.

the deal encompasses approximately 15,500 female employees who have worked in California since September 2013, details a press release published late Friday by the law firms that won the class action: Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Altshuler Berzon. The company also accepted that third parties made an analysis of their practices hiring and remuneration with a gender perspective.

“After nearly five years of litigation, both parties agreed that settling the case without admission (of liability) or conclusion, It is the best for everyone. And we are very happy to reach this agreement,” a Google spokesman told the AFP news agency.

The complaint was filed by former Google employees in 2017 before a court in San Francisco, where they stated that the internet giant women were paid less than men for the same positionsand that they appointed them to lower-ranking positions even though they had experiences and qualifications equivalent to men, under the pretext of basing them on their previous salaries.

According to the text of the agreement, revealed by the lawyers, Google “denies all the allegations in the complaint and affirms that (the group) has at all times fully complied with all applicable laws, rules and regulations.” the deal now must be approved by a judge.

Google, with a gender perspective and the Asian background

The giant Google had already reached an agreement before another lawsuit for discrimination against employees of Asian origin in 2021. Photo AFP

“We are absolutely committed to paying, hiring and leveling all employees fairly and equitably“, emphasized the company’s spokesman in the publication.

“If we find any difference in wages, even between men and women, we will adjust upwards to eliminate them before the new salary comes into force, and we will continue to do so,” he added.

The search engine of the algorithm had already made an agreement in 2021 to pay 3.8 million dollars to the work Department of the United States after accusations of discrimination against asian women and employees.

Most of this money would be used to compensate 2,565 women hired by Google in engineering chargesand 3,000 Asian male and female candidates who were not selected for those positions.

Google said at the time that discrimination had been detected during an internal analysis and that the company agreed to pay that amount to correct the situation. At the same time, he denied having broken the law.

For several years, male-female inequality has been a sensitive issue in Silicon Valley, the cradle of new technologies and a sector largely male dominated.

In August 2017, Google fired an engineer who had published a blog claiming that the reduced presence of women in the tech sector explained by “biological” factors.

During 2018, Google announced that it had a formula to stop the salary gap that historically exists between male and female employees. They claimed they had an algorithm for setting the magnifications.

“Each boss receives the salary and salary increase proposal from their employees based on an algorithm, where the sex of the person is not part of the data that is given to the algorithm and where it is considered what position it has, what level, what its evaluation has been, what objectives it had and what it has achieved. It is the algorithm itself that proposes salary increases and the salary scheme for each employee each year,” said the general director of Google Spain and Portugal at the time, Fuencisla Clemares.

Source: Telam

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