Former Employees Pursue Google Class Action Lawsuit over Wage Gap

Four former Google employees who filed suit against the tech giant over claims of gender discrimination are now asking a judge to certify their case as a class action representing thousands of women.

The plaintiffs say they have evidence proving more than 10,800 women suffered damage from what they allege was Google’s practice of funneling female employees to lower paying jobs and underpaying them.

Google will now have a chance to object to the class action request. A hearing on the matter is scheduled to take place December 2, according to legal news service Law360.

Google Class Action Lawsuit Overview

The female plaintiffs filed their original lawsuit in September 2017 in the Superior Court of the State of California in San Francisco. They are accusing Google of violating the California Equal Pay Act by hiring women at lower starting salaries than their male counterparts, by keeping them in lower paying jobs with fewer advancement opportunities and by promoting them less often than their male counterparts, according to court documents.

One of the lead plaintiffs says she came to Google in 2010 with four years of relevant experience to the job she was hired for, yet the company hired her at the salary level typically associated with recent college graduates. Weeks later, a man with the same amount of experience was hired to work on the same team, but was paid a bigger salary, the civil complaint notes.

The lawsuit notes that as time went on, the plaintiff says she earned good performance reviews on the job, but throughout her tenure with the company, Google paid her less than it did her male counterparts. After four years with the company, she resigned “because of the sexist culture at Google.”

New Accusations Filed With Class Action Certification Request

In the three years since they first filed the Google class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs have been gathering information and investigating their case. Now they claim they have collected enough data to demonstrate that more than 10,800 women had similar experiences at the company and the lawsuit should be officially certified as a class action.

All the women included in the proposed class worked for Google in California over the last seven years, most of them as software engineers, a report by Law360 said.

In their latest filings, the plaintiffs claim the gender-based pay inequality was due, in part, to Google’s past practice of asking job candidates for their salary history before deciding what rate of pay to offer them.

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Advocates for gender equality in the workplace have long complained about the negative impact salary histories have on efforts to close the gender pay gap in America. The issue is one of the key components of the federal Paycheck Fairness Act – a law proposed to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act. Under its terms, employers would be prohibited from using a job candidate’s salary history to decide on a salary offer. This could help to break the historical cycle of women being underpaid, its proponents say.

The measure has been introduced for each of the last 20 years, but Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on it. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the measure most recently in March 2019, around the same time women soccer players sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for $67M in gender inequality damages. The Senate, however, has not acted on it since.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 outlaws wage discrimination on the basis of gender. It considers wages to include salaries, overtime and bonus pay and all benefits of financial value such as dry cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement for travel expenses, and benefits.

In the Google class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs say the company engaged in “systemic” wage discrimination that cost the female workers who want to take part in the case an average of almost $17,000 a year, Law360 reported. The women say that Google knew or should have known of the pay disparity between male and female employees.

The Google Class Action Lawsuit is Case No. CGC-17-561299 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Francisco.

Join a Free California Wage & Hour Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you were forced to work off the clock or without overtime pay within the past 3 years in California, you have rights – and you don’t have to take on the company alone.

Get a Free Case Evaluation Now