Google pays $28 million to settle claims of racial bias

According to the lawyers involved in this case, Google will pay $28 million (PS21.5 million) to settle claims of racial discrimination against it.

The tech giant was accused of paying white and Asian employees more and giving them better career advancement opportunities than other ethnic groups.

Reuters reported that a class-action lawsuit was filed by at least 6,632 people who worked for Google between 15 February 2018, and 31 December 2024.

The company, although it has settled the case, denies all allegations that were initially filed in 2021.

Ana Cantu, a former employee, claimed that people of Hispanic, Latino and Native American backgrounds often received lower wages and began working in lower-level jobs than their white or Asian counterparts, even though they performed the same duties.

Google’s spokesperson stated: “We have reached a settlement, but we continue to disagree with allegations that we treated any employee differently. We remain committed to hiring, paying and levelling each employee fairly.”

Cantu was commended by Cathy Coble of Gunn Coble, a civil rights law firm representing the claimants. She said that Cantu had put her career at risk to address the race/ethnicity wage disparity in “one of the largest companies in the World”.

She also praised the courage of employees who self-reported and leaked their data to the media. Their actions enabled the firm to demand the discovery of data needed to support the class action. She stated: “Suspected inequity of pay is easily hidden without collective action by employees.”

Beth Gunn, Coble’s founder and co-founder, added: “Committing to closing the loopholes that allow discriminatory wage gap to continue will prevent losses of millions in employee take home pay and tax revenues to the State and ensure workers of diverse races are fairly compensated.” This result, we hope, will encourage California employers to commit themselves to this goal.”

Google agreed to work with a labour economic and an occupational psychology who would evaluate Google’s annual pay equity reviews, and the method used for assigning the initial job level. They will have their suggestions considered in order to respond to the allegations made.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced last month that it will no longer set targets for hiring to increase diversity in its workforce.

Liz Stevens is an employment professional support attorney at the law firm Birketts. She said that the Google case has some similarities with the ongoing group equal-pay claims in the UK. These are based on premise women are paid less than men for doing the same work or roughly equivalent work.

The lack of transparency in pay in this country and the lack of reliable data about pay discrepancies among different ethnic groups would make it hard to pursue a discrimination claim in the same manner here. The UK’s equal pay legislation only covers claims of unfair pay differentials for men and women .”

She believes that the new government consultation on plans to require employers with more than 250 employees to report their ethnicity (and disabilities) pay gaps, which could make it easier to identify disparities in pay between ethnic groups, is meant to encourage employers to take steps to reduce disparities.

Stevens said that the new reporting requirement will be similar to the current obligation for large employers, which is to report gender pay gaps annually. It may help to reduce any pay differences like those reported in Google’s case. The Equality (Race and Disability) Bill will introduce a new obligation to report pay gap based on disability and ethnicity. It is also expected that ethnic minorities and people with disabilities can pursue equal pay claims. This represents a significant expansion of current legislation.

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