(WN) The Labor Department will not get access to the full
details it has requested on 21,000 Google employees as part of its
investigation of equal pay, an administrative law judge has ruled, saying that
the agency's demand for data is too broad and could violate workers' privacy.
The provisional
ruling blocks efforts by officials to prove what they have calleda
“systemic” pay gap at the online search giant between men and women, allegedly
uncovered during a routine contracting audit. The decision, which must still be
finalized, could mark a victory for Google, which denies having paid women less
than their male counterparts.
Friday's decision by Steven Berlin, the judge overseeing the
case, said that Labor did not explain convincingly why it needed extensive data
on Googlers, including their names, addresses, telephone numbers and
personal email addresses.
The Labor Department had already requested that
Google provide information about workers' dates of birth, education,
performance ratings and salary histories, among other details.
Allowing the Labor Department to obtain all the data it seeks
could expose innocent Google employees to identity theft, fraud or other
mishaps in light of recent government data breaches, Berlin said.
“Anyone alive today
likely is aware of data breaches surrounding this country’s most recent
Presidential election,” he wrote. “The Department of Labor [...] was
recently attacked with Ransomware.
The same has
occurred at other government agencies and private businesses. Ransomware being
used internationally is reportedly derived from tools hacked from our national
security agencies. This Office (OALJ) has been hacked.”
The Labor Department should move more slowly and deliberately
with its investigation, Berlin added, rather than demanding data in bulk while
offering “nothing credible or reliable to show that its theory [... is]
anything more than speculation.”
Still, the Labor Department audit may continue with a more
limited set of employee records, Berlin wrote, prompting the agency to
celebrate a partial victory.
"The court’s decision vindicates [the] vigorous enforcement
of the disclosure and anti-discrimination obligations federal contractors
voluntarily accept in exchange for taxpayer funds,” said the department's
regional solicitor, Janet Herold, in a statement Sunday.
The 43-page decision could be finalized by as soon as the end of
the month if an appeal is not filed in the coming week.
Critics of Silicon Valley have drawn fierce attention to its
lack of diversity and its tendency to marginalize minorities and women, at
times highlighting cases of unwanted sexual advances from male co-workers or
refusals by management to address toxic workplace culture problems.
Susan Fowler,
a former engineer at Uber, helped renew the scrutiny facing tech companies
after writing a blog post alleging that Uber ignored chronic complaints
about her boss.
Uber has since undergone a rapid transformation with
the departure of key executives including its chief executive, Travis Kalanick,
but many argue that the company's problems are reflected in the rest of
the technology industry.
Under pressure to
hand over data that could prove the existence of a gender wage gap, Google has
balked at some of the Labor Department's demands, at one point arguing that it
would be too costly to produce the information.
The Internet
company has complied with other, earlier requests by the agency.
On Sunday, Google said in a blog post that the government went
too far when it asked for wage data stretching back more than a decade.
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