back to article Google must cough up contact info for 8,000 employees in gender discrimination case

Google has been ordered to hand over personal details of 8,000 employees as part of an ongoing US Labor Department investigation into equal pay. A judge provisionally ruled Friday that Google must provide names, personal addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses to the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract …

  1. Daggerchild Silver badge

    Human Instrumentation Project

    There should be fascinating data here about the underlying reasons for pay discrepancies in the tech industry.

    But I have a nagging feeling this isn't really about that.

    1. BillG
      Angel

      Re: Human Instrumentation Project

      "Together, this should give OFCCP ability to contact – confidentially and without Google's knowledge – all employees whom OFCCP believes are likely to have information relevant to the investigation..."

      Is it still without Google's knowledge if the employee's contact info is a gmail address?

  2. Gordon Pryra

    the company has already provided over 329,000 documents and 1.7 million-plus data points

    Would it have not just been easier to give them the 8000 contracts?

    or would these contracts say something different than the 329,000 documents and 1.7 million-plus data points........

  3. Hollerithevo

    Wait till Gender Pay Gap hits UK

    I already know my firm pays non-white men less than white men, all women here less than the non-white men, and non-white women less than their white sisters. Why? Because they can, and they can get away with it. For now.

    Do I think non-white men and all women will be paid more fairly in the future? No. The rules will be jigged, somehow.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wait till Gender Pay Gap hits UK

      In your firm, do they have a machine for measuring skin colour? Which part of the body do they test? Do people get a pay cut if they come back from their holidays with a tan?

    2. johnfbw

      Re: Wait till Gender Pay Gap hits UK

      I've worked for companies in the UK who pay non-British, non-white more money. Doubt anyone will be complaining there (yes I do have access to payroll)

  4. LeahroyNake

    Executive order

    Thank you for linking to the order.

    It actually says ...

    The Executive Order prohibits federal contractors and federally–assisted construction contractors and subcontractors, who do over $10,000 in Government business in one year from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.

    You missed sexual orientation and gender identity from the article (You could have just copy / pasted the paragraph). They are completely separate from sex. I was wondering if the order was that badly written, it was nice to be surprised for once by the order, the judge and

    Google's VP of People Operations.

    1. Daedalus

      Re: Executive order

      Much as you might like to crow about this sort of thing, these arbitrary ukases from the White House have the effect of discouraging smaller players from accepting Federal contracts, thus making sure that the deep pocket companies with armies of lawyers get all the pork. How would you like to be faced with a retroactive demand for information based on work you did in the past when the order was not even in force?

  5. hellwig

    We must be doing it wrong.

    In the provisional ruling, the judge decided the OFCCP should get some but not all of the data it requested, citing undue burden on the tech giant and employees (such as the security of data), the fact that some of the data it was seeking fell outside the period when Google was a federal contractor, and further questioning the theories on potential causes of pay disparity.

    Didn't realize the government could only view the data from a period when it was doing direct business. I would have thought once you opened that door, the government could see what it wanted to see.

    And "undue burden"? How can a company that spends millions of dollars arguing these decisions really complain about the "undue burden" of dumping contact information? I'm sure if I was a Google partner, I could pull millions of people's personal information for advertising purposes no sweat.

    1. ratfox

      Re: We must be doing it wrong.

      I'm sure if I was a Google partner, I could pull millions of people's personal information for advertising purposes no sweat.

      Think again. Google doesn't let anybody see that data, because it's much more valuable if they are the only one to know it.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: We must be doing it wrong.

      And "undue burden"? How can a company that spends millions of dollars arguing these decisions really complain about the "undue burden" of dumping contact information?

      Good point. Maybe it takes some time and money to select the employees who's data will be turned over? Or maybe just massage it a bit? Someone else pointed out the G-mail addy problem.

      While government wants to be Big Brother, methinks Google is already there and could teach government a few things....

    3. big_D Silver badge

      Re: We must be doing it wrong.

      Isn't Google's Raison d'être pulling information out of large datasets?

      It is a poor advertisement for their capabilities if they can' even extract salary and contact information from their own systems!

  6. RonWheeler

    Why this way round?

    Why not take 5000 random men and 5000 random women, compare them head to head in a skills test of boolean logic and programming. Then pick the top 0.1 percent as candidates. Double blind. If women come out equal, then let this case proceed. Otherwise I call discriminatory gender bias against the govt.

    1. ratfox
      WTF?

      Seriously?

      The law is not that men and women should be treated equally regardless of competence. It is that people of equal competence should be treated equally regardless of gender.

  7. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Can't the OFCCP just get the payroll info from the US tax dept?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I was at Google for a year and a half. Based on the internal culture, and the way that promotions are done, I would be shocked if women were not paid more than men. And yeah, the only code that I ran across that so angered me that I tracked down who wrote it--was written by a woman.

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