Google and age discrimination
Google parent company Alphabet is one of the biggest companies in the world. Right now, Google employs more than 103,000 people in various positions. The way the company treats its employees came under the scrutiny multiple times. A number of employees or people who wanted to work for the company accused Google of discrimination based on age, gender, etc. Several days ago, Google agreed to settle a federal lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the company discriminated based on the age of applicants. Software developer Cheryl Fillekes accused Google that company declines her application due to her age. At the time first job interview in the company Fillekes was 47 years old. In overall, Google interviewed her four times from 2007 to 2014. She never got the job. She said that Google did not offer her a job because the company decided to hire younger employees. Google denied that the company discriminated against the software developer. They said she failed to prove that she had the necessary skills required for the job.
The situation got worse for the tech giant when a federal judge gave permission to transform this case into the collective action. It was important because collective action is similar to a class action. As a result, more than 200 people, more specifically, 227 plaintiffs sued Google for age discrimination. Google agreed to settle this lawsuit back in December. However, the final version of the settlement was given to a federal judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, July 19.
Google agreed to pay $11 million to end this lawsuit. It means that each of the plaintiffs after the deduction of money paid to lawyers will receive $35,000. Also, the parent company of Google, Alphabet Inc. agreed to pay more attention to this problem. They will retrain managers as well as employees to increase awareness about age discrimination. Another step of the company is to create the committee to ensure that all applicants will have equal chances to complete the hiring process successfully.
Other cases of discrimination
This is not the first lawsuit due to age discrimination. In 2010, Brian Reid settled a lawsuit with Google. Reid accused Google that the company discriminated against him because of age. At a time when he started working at the company, he was 52 years old. He worked there for two years and left because at that time he was a head of a program to retrain the engineers. The company did not provide any money for this program, and he was the only one working on this project. Google decided to close this program. Amount of money Google paid to solve this problem remains unknown.
Age discrimination is an important issue. Companies around the world start paying more attention to this widespread problem. Google should implement new regulations to minimize the possibility that employees will face any form of discrimination.
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