Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google has denied allegations of underpaying female employees. The search engine giant said it was surprised with claims by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs at the U.S. Department of Labor (OFCCP) about the company’s pay equity policy.
On Friday, a representative of the Labor Department alleged during a court hearing in San Francisco that Google is systematically underpaying its female employees. “We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce,” Janette Wipper said, according to a report from The Guardian.
In a blog on Tuesday, Google said its annual scientific and robust analysis showed no gender pay gap.
“We were taken aback by this assertion, which came without any supporting data or methodology. The OFCCP representative claimed to have reached this conclusion even as the OFCCP is seeking thousands of employee records, including contact details of our employees, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents we’ve already produced in response to 18 different document requests,” Eileen Naughton, Vice President People Operations at Google, said in the blog.
Google said it each year suggests an amount for every employee’s new compensation based on role, job level, job location as well as current and recent performance ratings. Analysts who calculate the suggested amounts do not know about employees’ gender. The company gives an employee’s manager limited discretion to adjust the suggested amount.
“Our pay equity model then looks at employees in the same job categories and analyzes their compensation to confirm that the adjusted amount shows no statistically significant differences between men’s and women’s compensation,” according to Naughton.
Last year, Google conducted an analysis across 52 different, major job categories, and found no gender pay gap, Naughton said. “Our analysis gives us confidence that there is no gender pay gap at Google. In fact, we recently expanded the analysis to cover the race in the U.S.,” she added.
Google, according to Naughton, is looking to resolve the issue by working with the OFCCP.
Meanwhile, shares of Google’s parent Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) were down 0.05% in the pre-market trading session on Tuesday. The stock is up more than 6% year-to-date.