{"id":180303,"date":"2017-05-27T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-28T03:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/27\/google-gives-us-a-new-definition-of-chutzpah\/"},"modified":"2017-05-27T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T03:16:00","slug":"google-gives-us-a-new-definition-of-chutzpah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/27\/google-gives-us-a-new-definition-of-chutzpah\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Gives Us a New Definition of Chutzpah"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The US Department of Labor is investigating Google for discriminating against women.<\/div>\n<p>In response to a request for payroll data, Google has claimed that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2017\/may\/26\/google-gender-discrimination-case-salary-records\">it&#8217;s too expensive to collect the data<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This from a company that nets billions in profits, and which has automated search to a degree that would have been unimaginable only 3 decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like the man who murders his parents, and then asks for mercy because he is an orphan:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/google\">Google<\/a> argued that it was too financially burdensome and logistically challenging to compile and hand over salary records that the government has requested, sparking a strong rebuke from the US Department of Labor (DoL), which has accused the Silicon Valley firm of underpaying women. <\/p>\n<p>Allegations of possible employment violations emerge at court hearing as part of lawsuit to compel company, a federal contractor, to provide compensation data <\/p>\n<p>Google officials testified in federal court on Friday that it would have to spend up to 500 hours of work and $100,000 to comply with investigators\u2019 ongoing demands for wage data that the DoL believes will help explain why the technology corporation appears to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2017\/apr\/07\/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit\">systematically discriminating against women<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Noting Google\u2019s nearly $28bn annual income as one of the most profitable companies in the US, DoL attorney Ian Eliasoph scoffed at the company\u2019s defense, saying, \u201cGoogle would be able to absorb the cost as easy as a dry kitchen sponge could absorb a single drop of water.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The tense exchanges in a small San Francisco courtroom emerged in the final day of testimony in the most high-profile government trial to date surrounding the intensifying debate about the wage gap and gender discrimination in the tech industry. <\/p>\n<p>The DoL first publicly <a data-link-name=\"in body link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2017\/apr\/07\/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit\">accused Google of \u201csystemic compensation disparities\u201d<\/a>  during a hearing in April, saying a preliminary inquiry had found that  the Mountain View tech firm underpays women across positions. <\/p>\n<p>The current court battle stems from the DoL\u2019s lawsuit <a data-link-name=\"in body link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dol.gov\/newsroom\/releases\/ofccp\/ofccp20170104\">filed<\/a>  against Google in January, accusing the company of violating federal  laws by refusing to provide salary history and contact information of  employees as part of a government audit. As a federal contractor, Google  is required to comply with equal opportunity laws and allow  investigators to review records.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That whole, &#8220;Don&#8217;t be evil,&#8221; thing is so last week, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Department of Labor is investigating Google for discriminating against women. In response to a request for payroll data, Google has claimed that it&#8217;s too expensive to collect the data. This from a company that nets billions in profits, and which has automated search to a degree that would have been unimaginable only 3 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[714,450,364,367,407,437,382],"class_list":["post-180303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-discrimination","tag-employment","tag-evil","tag-internet","tag-justice","tag-regulation","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}