A number of California companies, especially in the tech industry are facing increased scrutiny over equal pay issues in recent years. While these types of claims have been hard to have certified as a class action on the federal level, some claims under California’s recent Equal Pay Act are seeing success. Here are five reminders that employers need to understand about California’s pay discrimination laws and the potential liability they carry:
1. The technology industry has been especially targeted in California for pay discrimination claims.
In June of 2021, a class action against Google alleging pay discrimination was granted class certification, and the case is likely to go to trial by the end of 2022. In 2020, a case against Oracle was also granted class certification. In May 2022, LinkedIn reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor for $1.8 million for 686 female workers in California. The settlement covered LinkedIn’s engineering and marketing positions in San Francisco and its engineering and product positions in Sunnyvale.
Plaintiffs filed a class action and PAGA lawsuit against Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, which produces the PlayStation, in May 2022. The lawsuit alleges that female employees were not equally compensated, were held back from promotions, or were denied promotions based on their gender. The lawsuit alleges violations of California’s Equal Pay Act, California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), failure to prevent and...
Social media was flooded with claims that a girl had been assaulted by alleged Hindu and RSS supporters in the presence of Delhi Police personnel, who supposedly remained silent spectators. The cl...