Google has metastasized into a Ministry of Truth, espousing and implementing the various politically correct doctrines of the left. Despite attempting to be a crusader for social justice, Google has been facing a series of gender pay controversies and privacy lawsuits in recent years.
On Wednesday, four former Google employees filed a lawsuit that alleges the tech juggernaut maintains gender pay inequities in the workforce, and that it extends to preschool teachers.
The latest claim is part of a revised gender-pay lawsuit that was initially dismissed last month by a California judge who concluded that the complaint was too broad. The lawsuit now represents women who hold positions in early childhood education, engineering, management, or sales.
Google Sued for Gender Pay Inequity
To attract the best and brightest talent from across the U.S. and around the world, Google offers employees childcare and early education as a perk. But it seems that benefit has backfired.
The refiled lawsuit includes Heidi Lamar, a teacher with a master’s degree employed at the company’s Children’s Center in Palo Alto from July 2013 to August 2017. She claims that just three of the nearly 150 teachers hired by Google were men, and two of them were paid more than all but one of the women hired.
Lamar joins the original plaintiffs: Kelly Ellis (software engineer), Holly Pease (management), and Kelli Wisuri (sales). These women submitted a complaint in September, alleging men received higher starting salaries and enhanced career tracks. A judge denied the class action claim, arguing that it could not properly define a class of people.
The lawsuit, which is again requesting class-action status, states:
“Google’s under-levelling of women not only resulted in Google paying them lower base salaries than if they had been properly levelled, but also resulted in Google paying them smaller bonuses and fewer stock units and options than if Google had placed them in the proper level.”
The tech titan is also being accused of violating a banned practice of asking about prior salaries.
Speaking in an interview with the London Guardian, Lamar averred that she did not want to be employed by a business that she can’t trust, adding that she did not want to “feel like my values of gender equality are being compromised.”
Google disputed the claims. Spokeswoman Gina Scigliano issued a statement on Wednesday:
“We work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here. Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no bias in these decisions.”
Google Investigated by Department of Labor
Does the search engine behemoth suffer from a gender pay gap?
The Department of Labor recently completed a three-year probe into pay practices at Google. In January 2017, the Labor Department sued Google to prevent the company from entering into contracts with the federal government until it released documents and records pertaining to employee compensation. The U.S. government wants to perform an audit to ensure Google is not discriminating employees based on gender or race.
Google has repeatedly noted that it extended hundreds of thousands of records to comply with the government’s demands. It has refused some of the department’s requests because the corporation views them as “overbroad” and an invasion of staff privacy.
It said in a response to the Department of Labor:
“We’re very committed to our affirmative action obligations, and to improving the diversity of our workforce, and have been very vocal about the importance of these issues.”
The latest suit does cite a Department of Labor analysis of data on 21,000 Google employees for 2015 that “found ‘systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.”
Moreover, Google has stated multiple times that there is no gender pay gap in its workforce.
Can Google Appease the Left?
Google has done everything in its power to acquiesce to the left’s demands. It has suppressed conservative websites in search results, it has fired employees for questioning affirmative action hiring policies, and it has censored YouTube personalities for committing thought crimes.
The gender pay gap is largely a myth, and it has been debunked multiple times over the years.
Should the newest suit get tossed out by a judge, feminists will still contend that there is a patriarchal conspiracy at Mountain View headquarters. Social justice advocates are hard to please, and it would be in Google’s best interest to quit constantly assuaging that crowd’s demands.
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