Google has been sued by three former female employees on claims the search engine paid women less than men for similair work.
The former employees, Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri, filed the gender pay discrimination lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court yesterday. They are seeking class action status to cover women who have worked at Google over the past four years.
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“Google has discriminated and continues to discriminate against its female employees by systemically paying them lower compensation than Google pays male employees performing substantially similar work, under similar working conditions," the complaint read.
The women claim they quit Google after being placed at lower job levels, which resulted in less pay, and denied promotions.
It serves as another blow to Google, which is already being investigated by the Labor Department over claims of unfair pay practices.
Extensive systems in place to ensure staff paid fairly
A spokeswoman for Google said the company works hard to create a “great workplace for everyone” and give “everyone the chance to thrive here."
"In relation to this particular lawsuit, we'll review it in detail, but we disagree with the central allegations. Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no gender bias in these decisions," spokeswoman Gina Scigliano said.
"And we have extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly."
The lawsuit was brought forward after the Labor Department’s investigation prompted attorney James Finberg to ask female employees to come forward if they had experienced pay discrimination.
Finberg is representing the women in the lawsuit along with attorney Kelly M. Dermody of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein.
Shares in Google parent company Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) were little changed in US pre-market trading with shares down 0.04% to US$939.71 each.