Google is sued over pay inequity
Female former staffers say they made less than men
When software engineer Kelly Ellis joined Google in 2010, she thought she’d landed her dream job after four years working in tech. But soon she realized that she was being paid the same as recent college graduates. When she requested a raise that would bring her salary in line with those of male peers with similar qualifications, she was denied, she said.
“I felt like I was playing catch-up when I was at Google,” Ellis said.
Ellis and two other female former Google staffers filed a lawsuit Thursday against the
Mountain View company for failing to pay them as much as men. The lawsuit says that Google unfairly classified female workers at lower pay levels than men with the same work experience or less, a characterization that Ellis says cost her thousands of dollars in salary.
“It kind of feels like legal action is the only way that we are going to make anything change in a meaningful way,” said Ellis, who left Google in 2014 and most recently worked at Medium.
Google said that it disagrees with the “central allegations” in the lawsuit and says it has “extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly.”
“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 spokeswoman Gina Scigliano.
The allegations come at a time when Google is being audited by the Department of Labor. The department said that based on its preliminary findings, it believes Google has compensated female employees less than men. Google says it has no gender pay gap.
Google recently fired software engineer James Damore after he wrote a memo advancing his view that men have biological traits that make them more suitable for coding jobs than women. Google’s workforce is 69 percent male, according to data it has released.
Ellis said that part of Google’s problem is how it handles promotions. She started at Google at
“It kind of feels like legal action is the only way that we are going to make anything change in a meaningful way.” Kelly Ellis, former Google engineer who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit
Level 3, earning a $95,000 salary, plus other compensation like stock and cash bonuses. But later she learned that male engineers, who she believed had qualifications equal to or less than hers, were placed or promoted into Level 4 positions.
She asked for a promotion to Level 4 during her performance review, but was told that she had not established a sufficient track record, and her request was denied, Ellis said. Eventually, her salary rose, and when she left Google she was classified as a Level 5 software engineer. The difference between Level 3 and Level 4 was thousands of dollars in pay, Ellis said.
“It was kind of ridiculous they made me wait in the first place,” she added.
Ellis said that one of the factors involved in assessing pay classifications is handling a project with a certain level of complexity. Whether women get those opportunities depends on their managers, she said.
“They are sweeping under the rug elements that contribute to bias,” Ellis said.
The lawsuit also alleges that female employees were shifted to roles that typically are paid less, despite work experiences that could qualify them for positions with higher pay.
Lisa Klerman, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, said she’s seeing more of these lawsuits since the state strengthened a law as of January 2016 that requires employers to pay women similarly to men for similar work.
Klerman said it is hard to weigh in on the merits of the case without hearing Google’s version of events. She said it’s possible for an employer to have differences in pay based on an employee’s credentials or prior experience like a prestigious internship.
“If it merits a differential in pay, then the employer can pay the different rate without running afoul of the equal-pay laws,” Klerman said.