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Three women who used to work at Google have filed a lawsuit against the technology giant, alleging it pays women less than men for comparable work.

The suit says Google is aware of the situation, but has not moved to fix it.

It comes as companies in Silicon Valley face growing scrutiny over gender relations.

Google is also under investigation by the US Department of Labor over its pay practices.

"It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech," said Kelly Ellis, a former software engineer at Google and one of the women who filed the suit.

She posted on Twitter that she hopes the suit will force Google and other companies to change their practices.

Skip Twitter post by @justkelly_ok My hopes for the Google suit: to force not only Google, but other companies to change their practices and compensate EVERYONE fairly. — Kelly Ellis (@justkelly_ok) September 14, 2017 Report

The lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court, says Google discriminates against female staff with lower pay, more limited promotion, and fewer advancement opportunities compared to men with comparable qualifications.

Ms Ellis, for example, was hired in 2010 at a level typically assigned to college graduates, although she had four years of experience, according to the lawsuit. A male colleague with similar levels of experience started on a higher rung.

She was also assigned to a less prestigious engineering role, the suit says

Ms Ellis resigned from Google four years later "because of the sexist culture", the lawsuit said.

Previous allegations

The complaint is seeking class-action status that would cover women working at the company in California for the last four years. They are looking for unpaid wages, among other remedies.

Google said it would review the lawsuit but disagreed with the "central allegations".

"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 gender bias in these decisions," spokeswoman Gina Scigliano said in a statement.

Like other companies in Silicon Valley, the company has faced questions about how it treats women before.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Google's Sundar Pichai criticised a memo written by an employee for being sexist

About 70% of Google's workforce are men, according to the company. Men represent about 80% of staff in "tech" roles and 75% of leadership positions.

The Department of Labour found systematic pay disparities at the firm during a 2015 audit, according to the lawsuit. The government in January sued Google to get access to more information to see if the patterns held true across a more extensive probe.

A spreadsheet with data from 1,200 employees also found disparities, the New York Times recently reported.

Google also made headlines earlier this summer, when a memo written by a senior Google employee that criticised diversity programmes and hiring practices became public.

Google later fired him.</s>MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Google (GOOG) faces a new lawsuit accusing it of gender-based pay discrimination. A lawyer representing three female former Google employees is seeking class action status for the claim.

The suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, follows a federal labor investigation that made a preliminary finding of systemic pay discrimination among the 21,000 employees at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The initial stages of the review found women earned less than men in nearly every job classification.

Google disputes the findings and says its analysis shows no gender pay gap.

The suit, led by lawyer James Finberg of Altshuler Berzon LLP, is on behalf of three women -- Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri -- who all quit after being put on career tracks that they claimed would pay them less than their male counterparts. The suit aims to represent thousands of Google employees in California and seeks lost wages and a slice of Google's profits.

"I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google," Ellis said in a statement. She says she quit Google in 2014 after male engineers with similar experience were hired to higher-paying job levels and she was denied a promotion despite excellent performance reviews. "It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech."

Charges of gender discrimination have swirled at Alphabet Inc.-owned Google since the U.S. Labor Department sued in January to bar Google from doing business with the federal government until it released thousands of documents related to an audit over its pay practices. The sides have been battling in court over how much information Google must turn over.

The lawsuit also follows the firing of male engineer James Damore, who wrote a memo circulated on internal message boards that blamed inherent differences between men and women for the underrepresentation of women in engineering roles.</s>Three former employees of Google have filed a class action lawsuit against the internet giant, alleging a pattern of discrimination against women workers, including systemically lower pay than their male counterparts.

The lawsuit was filed by ex-Googlers Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, and Kelli Wisuri in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, and follows a suit against the tech giant filed earlier this year by the United States Department of Labor, which said it found evidence of an "extreme" gender pay gap at the company.

The three claim that during the course of their respective time at Google, which spans, between them, from 2005 through 2016, the company "discriminated and continues to discriminate against its female employees by paying female employees less than male employees with similar skills, experience, and duties," reads the suit.

"The net result of this systemic discrimination is that Google pays women less than men for comparable work."

Kelly Ellis, an experienced software engineer, resigned from Google in 2014 after four years "because of the sexist culture," says the complaint.

The suit alleges that Ellis was "occupationally-segregated" into a front-end role because of a "false and gendered perception at Google that back-end software engineering is more technically rigorous, and therefore more prestigious." Ellis observed that "almost all back-end software engineers were men."

"I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google," said Ellis in a statement on Thursday. "It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech."

Ellis and her two fellow plaintiffs claim to represent all women employed by Google and are seeking a jury trial. The class action case will draw on the Department of Labor's recent analysis, which found between six and seven standard deviations between wage rates of men and women based on a snapshot of the salaries of 21,000 workers at Google's Mountain View headquarters.

Google disputes Thursday's allegations, adding that they have "systems in place to ensure that [they] pay fairly."

"We work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here," said spokesperson Gina Scigliano. "In relation to this particular lawsuit, we’ll review it in detail, but we disagree with the central allegations."

"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 gender bias in these decisions. And we have extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly. But on all these topics, if we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees."

Google found itself the subject of scrutiny from the alt-right and its allies in August after firing male engineer James Damore, who wrote a manifesto of sorts, claiming there are biological reasons women aren't equally represented in tech leadership, including "neuroticism."

At the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a memo of his own making it clear that while the company "strongly support[s] the right of Googlers to express themselves," some of the content of the viral document crossed the line by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes," counter to the company's code of conduct.</s>Three former employees of Google on Thursday sued the Alphabet Inc-owned company and accused it of gender discrimination in pay and promotion, Reuters reported.

The plaintiffs – a former Google software engineer, a former communications specialist and a former manager – accused the tech major of paying its male staff significantly higher salaries than their female counterparts for work performed in similar roles. They also alleged that Google assigned female employees positions that have limited career growth.

“While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer Kelly Dermody said.

The proposed class action lawsuit comes at a time when the company is mired in an investigation by the United States Department of Labour into allegations of sex biases in pay practices. Google spokesperson Gina Scigliano refuted the allegations, saying committees on hiring and promotions decide on employment matters “to make sure there is no gender bias”.</s>Systematically paying women less than men. Promoting them more slowly. And denying them opportunities.

These are the allegations in a lawsuit against Google filed Thursday in San Francisco on behalf of three female former employees.

They're seeking class-action status to sue on behalf of all women employed by Google in California over the past four years. "The lawsuit appears to be the first to make class action sex bias claims against Google," according to Reuters.

"While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century. This case seeks to ensure fairness for women at Google," said Kelly Dermody, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

The Labor Department is currently investigating Google over accusations that it pays women less. As The Two-Way reported in April, "just three days after Google announced that it had 'closed the gender pay gap globally' on Equal Pay Day, a Department of Labor official testified in federal court that there is 'systemic' discrimination against women at Google."

Gina Scigliano, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement to NPR that "we disagree with the central allegations" in the lawsuit. She added that "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 gender bias in these decisions."

The three plaintiffs disagree. According to the complaint, software engineer Kelly Ellis was hired to an entry-level position in 2010 despite four years' experience. Within weeks, a male engineer with comparable experience was hired to a higher-level position.

Despite "excellent performance reviews," Google allegedly denied Ellis' first promotion request, the complaint states. "Ms. Ellis eventually obtained the higher-paying Level 4 designation that was handed to her male counterparts on their first day on the job — but by that time, her male counterparts were on their way to even higher levels and compensation for similar work, ensuring that she could never catch up on the gender pay gap."

The plaintiffs are seeking the wages they say they are owed under California labor law, interest on those wages at a rate of 10 percent annually, plus other damages and penalties.

The complaint stresses that Google knew — or should have known — about the pay differences between its male and female employees. The difference in compensation "has been and is willful," the plaintiffs allege.

"I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google," Ellis said in a statement. "It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech."

The Labor Department said it found pay disparities during a compliance review it launched in 2015. As Reuters reported, "the department last month appealed an administrative judge's July decision that rejected its request for contact information for more than 20,000 Google employees."

As NPR's Aarti Shahani has noted, Google's track record on diversity is poor:</s>Gina Scigliano, a spokeswoman for Google, said the company was reviewing the suit, but added that “we disagree with the central allegations.” Job levels and promotions at Google, she said, are determined through a rigorous process that includes checks to ensure there that no gender bias figured in decisions.

The suit comes after of a contentious fight with the Labor Department over a routine audit of the Google’s pay practices. Google is subject to Labor Department oversight as a federal contractor that sells advertising and internet services to the government.

At a hearing this year, a department official said the audit had found “systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire work force, ” although Google has not officially been accused of any wrongdoing.

Last week, The New York Times published an article showing, according to data compiled by employees that provided a snapshot of salary information, that Google’s female employees in the United States were paid less than male employees at most job levels at the company, and that the pay disparity extended as women rose up the ranks.

Google said the data painted an incomplete picture of how its workers are paid, because it did not take into account different roles at the company, job performance and where the employees are based. Based on its own January 2017 analysis, Google said that, accounting for factors like tenure, job role and performance, female employees earned 99.7 cents to every dollar earned by men.

In the suit, Kelly Ellis, a former Google software engineer and one of the three plaintiffs, says that when the company hired her in 2010, she was brought in as a Level 3 employee — a term for entry-level software engineers who are new college graduates — despite having four years of work experience.

Within a few weeks of her hiring, the suit says, Google hired a male engineer onto her team who, like Ms. Ellis, had graduated from college four years earlier. But, the suit says, he was hired as a Level 4 employee, meaning he was paid a higher salary and had more opportunities for bonuses, raises and stock compensation. The suit says that other men on Ms. Ellis’s team whose qualifications were equal to or less than hers were also brought in at Level 4.

Google also segregated by roles within its engineering ranks, the suit says. Ms. Ellis had experience as a back-end engineer — a job that involves managing large systems like servers and databases — but was assigned to a front-end engineering role dealing with parts of a service that users interact with.

At Google, the suit says, back-end engineering jobs are considered more technically rigorous and more prestigious and that Google pays back-end engineers more and promotes them faster. Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. (After she left the company, Ms. Ellis accused a former manager of sexual harassment.)

A second plaintiff, Holly Pease, who worked at Google for 11 years and left in 2016, says in the suit that she was denied opportunities to gain status as a “technical” employee. Such employees earn more than nontechnical employees. She did not gain that status, despite having more than 10 years of experience as a network engineer and managing a Google team made up mostly of technical staff members.

The suit cites the Labor Department’s review of compensation data for all 21,000 employees at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters for 2015, which found that the pay disparity between men and women was significant enough that there was “a one in 100 million chance” that it was occurring r by chance.

Google and the Labor Department are battling in court over how much data the company needs to hand over as part of a review of its pay practices.

Google said it had already handed over 1.7 million data points and 329,000 documents as part of the inquiry and that the Labor Department was overreaching in its requests for more information. An administrative law judge ruled in July that Google had to hand over some data, although not as much as the Labor Department sought.</s>Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, and Kelli Wisuri all left Google after they were put on career trajectories that they suggest would have resulted in lower salaries than their male counterparts. The suit alleges that Google segregates women into lower paying jobs that curb progression, while men with equivalent qualifications face no such hurdles. For its part, Google says it is currently reviewing the suit, but disagrees with its "central allegations."

"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 gender bias in these decisions," said Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano.

The case comes on the heels of a full-blown PR debacle for the company. Last month, Google fired a male employee for circulating an internal memo that enforced "harmful" gender stereotypes. The controversial document, attacking Google's purported "ideological echo chamber," suggested that women had low representation in software engineering due to biological differences.

The firm is also in the midst of a legal battle with the Department of Labor (DoL) over its pay practices. The two sides have been going back and forth over how much data Google must hand over. But, the DoL didn't mince words during its testimony in court earlier this year: "We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce," said Janette Wipper, a DoL regional director. The agency based those claims on a 2015 snapshot of Google salaries. The tech giant denied the allegations, even going so far as to release its own study illustrating that it pays men and women equally. The latest suit cites the DoL's review of wage data for employees at the Mountain View company's headquarters.

Like the rest of Silicon Valley, Google is evidently grappling with diversity issues. Despite pouring millions into initiatives to broaden its workforce, its latest report on inclusion showed that women make up just 20 percent of its tech roles. The picture is bleaker still for blacks (just 1 percent in technical jobs) and Latinos (3 percent in tech roles).</s>Three female former employees of Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing the tech company of discriminating against women in pay and promotions.

The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in California state court in San Francisco, comes as Google is facing an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor into sex bias in pay practices.

The plaintiffs are a former Google software engineer, a former communications specialist and a former manager who worked in various roles at the Mountain View, California-based company. They say Google pays women in California less than men who perform similar work, and assigns female workers jobs that are less likely to lead to promotions.

"While Google has been an industry-leading tech innovator, its treatment of female employees has not entered the 21st century," Kelly Dermody, a lawyer for the women, said in a statement.

Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano denied the claims in a statement. She said employment decisions are made by hiring and promotion committees, and are vetted "to make sure there is no gender bias."

"If we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees," she said.

The plaintiffs say Google violated California laws requiring equal pay for similar work and prohibiting unfair and unlawful business practices. They are seeking to represent a class of women who worked at Google in California over the last four years.

The Labor Department investigation stems from a 2015 audit in which the department says it discovered sex-based wage gaps among Google workers.

The department last month appealed an administrative judge's July decision that rejected its request for contact information for more than 20,000 Google employees.</s>Three women who say they faced discrimination in salary and promotions at Google are hoping to turn their experiences into a class-action lawsuit.

A trio of former Google employees filed a lawsuit against the tech giant on Thursday that alleges that the company systematically paid women less for the same work and denied them opportunities for advancement, the Guardian reported.

“Google has discriminated and continues to discriminate against its female employees by systematically paying them lower compensation than Google pays to male employees performing substantially similar work under similar working conditions,” the lawsuit says.

Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, and Kelli Wisuri filed the lawsuit on behalf of all women who have worked for Google in California over the past four years. That means more Google employees—including those who earned less than their male colleagues, were denied promotions, or otherwise faced discrimination at work—could join on, turning the lawsuit into a major class-action case.

The lawsuit hits Google just over a month after engineer James Damore's memo arguing that women are biologically unsuited for careers in tech went public, causing an uproar against Google and leading to his firing. Months before that, the Department of Labor started investigating Google for pay discrimination.

Google is just one example of how women throughout Silicon Valley are routinely undervalued and excluded from opportunities.

Ellis, the lead plaintiff on this case, told the Guardian that male engineers with similar or lesser qualifications were assigned to more prestigious and higher-paying jobs. She also witnessed segregation between women working the less prestigious front-end engineering jobs and men who got the more coveted back-end jobs.

Pease was excluded from the technical career track and classified as non-technical despite having a technical background, the lawsuit said.

Wisuri described being placed on the lowest rung at Google after the company acquired her startup. She eventually quit after seeing a lack of opportunities for advancement for women.

"We work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here. In relation to this particular lawsuit, we’ll review it in detail, but we disagree with the central allegations," Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano said. "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 gender bias in these decisions. And we have extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly. But on all these topics, if we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees."</s>Tech giant, Google is being sued as three former women employees have claimed that they were paid less than men and also missed out on promotions.

Kelly Ellis a former Google employee said she started with the tech giant in 2010, her male colleague who also started at the same was paid more than Ellis.

She had four years’ experience and her pay grade was on a college graduates pay grade, level 3 whilst her male colleague was on level 4, the BBC said.

Despite Ellis’s strong performance review’s, she was denied promotion, although the man graduated in 2006, the same year as Ellis.

Ellis quite her job after being with Google for four years, she cited the firm’s “sexist culture,” Holly pease and Kelli Wisuri have both made similar allegations and are also suing seeking a class action status.

A Google spokeswoman, Gina Scigliano, who was quoted by CNN said: “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 gender bias in these divisions.

“If we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees.”

Google is defending their position and said the allegations are unfounded.
Google is being sued over alleged inequality in the pay of male and female employees.