Redwood City software giant Oracle, while systematically favoring Asians in hiring, systematically paid women, blacks and Asians less, with pay disparities costing workers more than $400 million in lost wages, the Department of Labor claimed in a new lawsuit filing.
And only a handful of blacks and Hispanics were brought into technical jobs at Oracle headquarters over four years, the Labor Department alleged.
The department’s allegations relate to several job categories at the Redwood City headquarters — where about 7,000 of its 45,000 full-time U.S workers are employed — from as early as 2013, according to the suit.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2017 with an amended complaint introduced Tuesday, alleged that the government found “gross and statistically significant disparities in the hiring of Asians versus non-Asians” in two job categories at Oracle’s headquarters — and that the firm used recruiting and hiring practices that stacked the applicant pool with Asians, particularly Indians.
Oracle, led by executive chairman Larry Ellison, has refused to give the government certain data on compensation and hiring, according to the suit.
The amended complaint alleged that of about 500 people hired into technical jobs over four years, only five were Hispanic and six African-American, according to The Guardian.
The filing claimed women and people of color suffer “extreme” disparities during their careers at Oracle, The Guardian reported. An Oracle spokesperson declined to comment on the new complaint, according to The Guardian.
The Labor Department also alleged that Oracle underpaid more than 5,000 women, with compensation disparities between genders as high as 20 percent, and that the firm also underpaid more than 11,000 Asian workers, with disparities as high as 8 percent, according to The Guardian.
Among the many factors driving Oracle’s systematic underpayment to women, blacks and Asians was reliance on prior salaries in setting pay, the lawsuit alleged. California last year banned companies from asking about previous salary.
Oracle has also since 2017 been fighting a lawsuit by six women claiming some women at the company were paid as much as $13,000 less than men for equivalent work.
The Labor Department is seeking a court order that Oracle pay back the lost wages. The Department is also seeking a court order canceling Oracle’s federal government contracts and banning it from more such deals until it remedies its alleged hiring and pay problems. Oracle had millions of dollars in federal contracts during the period at issue in the lawsuit, according to the suit.
Google has also been hit by a Labor Department lawsuit claiming it systematically paid women less. Google has denied the allegation.
