It was announced on Tuesday that LinkedIn, a professional networking platform, had reached a settlement with the United States Department of Labor, which will pay $1.8 million to female employees who, according to the agency, received significantly less compensation than their male counterparts between 2015 and 2017.
A statement issued by the government said that LinkedIn denied 686 women equal pay in its San Francisco office and at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The women had positions in engineering, marketing, and product development.
“Our agreement will ensure that LinkedIn better understands its obligations as a federal contractor,” Jane Suhr, a regional director of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement released by the agency.
LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, issued a statement on Tuesday in which it disputed that company had discriminated against particular workers.
According to the statement, “While we have agreed to resolve this dispute, we do not accept the government’s assertion.”
According to the conciliation agreement, the settlement includes almost $1.75 million in back pay and more than $50,000 in interest payments to be made to the women involved.
According to the Labor Department, as part of the settlement, LinkedIn agreed to submit quarterly reports to the government for the next three years while it examines its pay policy and makes wage modifications, according to the agency. In exchange for this agreement, the corporation committed to conduct a staff training session on “nondiscrimination requirements.”
According to LinkedIn, female workers earned $0.999 for every dollar earned by male employees in the company’s fiscal year 2017. According to the company’s website, it employs more than 19,000 employees in over 100 countries globally.
It was noted in the company’s statement that “LinkedIn pays and has compensated its workers fairly and equally when comparing comparable work.”
According to a 1965 executive order, federal contractors, like LinkedIn, are required to give “equal opportunity” to all of its workers and are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of gender, gender identity, or other criteria, among other things.
Women in the United States have historically been paid less than males in general. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women who work full time in 2021 will earn around 83 percent of what their male colleagues earned in the same year.
Tech businesses have come under special criticism in recent years because of what critics claim is a failure to give equal chances to women and people of minorities in the workplace.
In February 2021, Google struck a settlement with the Labor Department in which it agreed to pay $3.8 million to resolve allegations that it had discriminated against female and Asian workers and applicants in its hiring and compensation choices.
As part of a deal with state authorities in Rhode Island, Pinterest committed to investing $50 million in changes by November 2021 in order to satisfy charges that the company discriminated against women and people of colour, among other things.
