Google has been refuting all the allegations for discriminating against applicants who are old enough, for a long time. Looks like the tech giant have had enough and decided to settle once and for all. Google has reportedly settled a lawsuit wherein the company was accused of discriminating job seekers during the process of hiring. The company has also paid a staggering $11 million to more than 200 job applicants who were over 40 years of age when they had applied for a position in the company.
Google Hiring: The Allegations!
While the company has denied any such accusations, it has argued that the reason behind not selecting those applicants was the fact that they did not have any technical knowledge of the work, rather than their age.
The lawsuit was first filed by Cheryl Fillekes, who is a software engineer and was interviewed by the company four times between 2007 and 2014.
There are many people who argue that they had interviewed by the company more than 1 time but were never offered a job due to their age. People involved in the lawsuit will reportedly receive an amount totalling to $35,000 as compensations.
For quite a long time, the many other players in the tech industry have been accused of employing a discriminating hiring strategy, mainly due to the age factor. PayScale, a research organization, also suggests that an average Facebook employee is 29 years of age, while an Amazon employee is 30 years of age.
Regardless, the above-mentioned settlement is applicable only to a small number of people, especially since it is not possible for the company to find out each victim of the privacy violation. As of now, only 18 people have come up and filed an action against the company. These people will also be the only people who will be entitled to pay-outs. All the remaining money will be distributed amongst different consumer privacy groups.
This is not the first time when Google is accused of employing discriminating strategies. In March last year, Google was accused of being racist on the basis of white and Asian men during the hiring process. In the lawsuit filed by Google’s former recruiter, it was revealed that the tech giant wanted to boost the diversity in the company which led to such discrimination.
In early 2018, Google once again found itself in hot waters when a bunch of former employees accused Google of underpaying women employees.
Google On A Settlement Spree
The lawsuit for hiring discrimination is not the only one Google has decided to settle. The company has also decided to settle another lawsuit, regarding violations of data protection during the 2010 Street View Project, also known as Wi-Spy, by paying $13 million. As part of the project, camera-equipped cars were used to map the streets of U.S. But Google was allegedly collecting various data, information as well as personal credentials using open Wi-Fi networks as the cars drove by different homes.
