[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] The world's largest search engine company, Google, has been found to have engaged in wage discrimination against female employees. As a result, it has agreed to pay $2.6 million (approximately 2.9 billion KRW) in back wages.
According to major foreign media on the 1st (local time), the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Google reached a settlement worth about $3.8 million (approximately 4.24 billion KRW), including $2.6 million in back wages, related to allegations that it paid female employees less and unfairly excluded female and Asian applicants from hiring.
These suspicions were raised during a mandatory regular compliance audit conducted after Google was selected as a technology supplier to the federal government several years ago.
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which oversees federal government contractors, found evidence that Google paid 2,783 female employees in the software engineering departments at its Mountain View headquarters in California and Seattle, Washington, less than male employees performing similar roles from 2014 to 2017.
OFCCP also discovered that during the hiring process for software engineers from September 2016 for one year in San Francisco and Sunnyvale, California, and Kirkland, Washington, the hiring rates for female and Asian applicants were relatively low.
Under this settlement, Google will pay $2.6 million to about 5,500 employees and rejected job applicants. It will also review its hiring and wage practices.
Additionally, $1.25 million will be set aside as a fund to cover potential wage adjustment costs over the next five years. Any unused funds will be used for diversity promotion activities.
Although Google conducts annual internal audits of wages, major foreign media reported that, like other large information technology (IT) companies, whether its workforce properly reflects the racial and gender composition of American society remains subject to public scrutiny.
Google has strongly denied these claims, calling them baseless in response to audit results.
Google stated, "We believe everyone should be paid based on what they do, not who they are," and added, "We are investing heavily to ensure that our hiring and compensation processes are fair and unbiased."
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