UPDATED 22:19 EDT / MAY 29 2017

NEWS

Google says it just costs too much to provide wage data in gender pay gap case

Google Inc. is continuing to resist a demand from the United States Department of Labor that it provides data on its employees’ salaries, in a months-long case where it was accused of gender pay discrimination.

On Friday, representatives of the company told a federal court that complying with Labor’s request would be too much of a burden, as it would cost the company around $100,000 and 500 working hours to provide said data.

Previously, the department said the data it wants Google to provide would help prove that the Alphabet Inc.-owned company has been systematically discriminating against female employees by underpaying them in relation to how much their male colleagues earn.

The department said it was suing Google for the data earlier this year after it refused to provide comprehensive employee data as part of a mandatory compliance review. Google is subject to these reviews because it’s a government contractor, which means it’s forbidden from any kind of discrimination against its employees, intentionally or not.

Ian Eliasoph, Labor’s legal representative, reacted by mocking Google’s defense, telling The Guardian that the company is one of the most profitable in the country and that it could easily foot the bill in order to comply with the data request.

According to Eliasoph, Google has earned “millions” from lucrative government contracts and in 2015 announced “with great public fanfare” an investment of $150 million into diversity initiatives. “Google cannot claim … that it now has no money to comply with a federal agency seeking to ensure compliance with equal opportunity laws on behalf of the public,” Eliasoph said.

The lawyer also claimed that Google, which has more than 21,000 employees, was acting as if it’s “too big to comply” with the department’s request. However, he said the company shouldn’t be allowed to sidestep anti-discrimination laws just because it’s a large organization with a complex compensation model. “Google takes routine requests and makes them sound onerous by emphasizing the number of people involved,” Eliasoph added.

In Google’s defense, the company’s own lawyers pointed out that it has already spent more than $500,000 and 2,300 working hours to comply with the department’s demands. Google said those demands are too “broad and unconstitutional,” as it would be violating its employee’s right to privacy by handing over their salary information. Google told Recode that the department’s requests “include thousands of employees’ private contact information, which we safeguard rigorously.”

Despite the ongoing case against it, Google announced last April that it has finally closed its gender pay gap in all of its offices worldwide. However, achieving that milestone won’t help it in this case, which relates to discrepancies in pay dating back to 2015 and earlier.

Image: Google U.K.

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