Google, tell us about the wage gap

I love it. Google has really stepped in it this time, and they own the shit they’ve stepped in.

Google, welcome to the social justice BS you push on others.

The fake “gender pay gap” is now a concern of the government and Google is now the testing ground for that feminist myth vs. constitutional freedom.

The US Dept. of Labor is investigating Google for gender wage discrimination and is seeking salary data to back up its claims.

From an article in The Guardian, here’s a quote from the US DoL:

“’We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce,’ Janette Wipper, a DoL regional director, testified in court in San Francisco on Friday.

Reached for comment Friday afternoon, Janet Herold, regional solicitor for the DoL, said: ‘The investigation is not complete, but at this point the department has received compelling evidence of very significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters.’

Herold added: ‘The government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry.’

Google strongly denied the accusations of inequities, claiming it did not have a gender pay gap.

Google began releasing diversity statistics in 2014 and reported last year that women made up 31% of its overall workforce and that only 2% of workers were black and 3% Latino. White employees accounted for 59% of the US workforce and Asians made up 32%.”

They didn’t see this coming? The pie in the sky dream of all the colors of the rainbow employed in the proper numbers at the proper salaries just doesn’t jibe with the realities of running a huge company in a free society. As the law requires, applicants for a job should be evaluated on merit and not sex, race, religion, etc, so unless you employ a quota system, the percentages of the sexes or the races will vary greatly according to many factors, hence the 31% figure.

So now the government is in the fruit comparison business, and I hope it does the politically incorrect thing and compare apples to apples, not oranges.

This battle involves the constitutional right to hire who you want, for how much, and who knows about it. It also involves that seemingly indestructible myth of the “pay gap” as well as another feminist goal, “pay transparency.”

And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

Google aspires to achieving gender and racial diversity percentages that are in line with, I assume, the percentage in the population.

But, of course, this is where their efforts are misdirected. They confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, assuming that everyone’s interests are equal, regardless of sex, and that should be evident in the numbers. So, since 31% of Google employees are female – not 50% – it is assumed to be discrimination.

But men and women have different interests and even different expectations, so to compare apples to oranges is pure politics. Men, in general, like computers and coding more than women, so there’s your first big clue. When corrected for hours worked, experience,  and other factors, the gap narrows to a couple of points, and in some categories women out-earn men.

Go ahead, Google, show how the feminist/SJW utopia of total equality will allow your company to really blossom with its strength of diversity and ‘girl power.’ Forget those tired ideas of meritocracy where hard work gets rewarded – that isn’t fair – er, I mean –  lazy people don’t like it!

Thank goodness the U.S. Dept. of Labor is trying to bully companies into not hiring so many talented people over the less talented. What do they think this is a free country? Nothing good ever came out of freedom and hard work. It’s diversity and equality of outcome that counts!

From Reuter’s “Google’s diversity efforts show scant progress:”

Google vice president of people operations Nancy Lee said the figures do not reflect where the company wants to be and said many small changes that do not show up in the statistics are having an impact.

She pointed to conversations on diversity leading to a discussion on pay equity, which in turn resulted in a policy of paying employees according to position rather than by negotiated rates, which were often lower for women and minorities.

“It’s a journey. We’re a 60,000 person company and culture change takes time,” said Google diversity coordinator Yolanda Mangolini.

The figures underscore challenges tech companies face in transforming cultures that critics say are too homogenous, white and male-dominated. The most recent diversity reports from Facebook and Twitter show similar trends to Google in employment of blacks and Latinos, while Apple did slightly better partially due to more diverse hiring at its retail stores.

Lisa Barnett Sween, one of Google’s attorneys, testified in opening remarks that the DoL’s request constituted a “fishing expedition that has absolutely no relevance to the compliance review”. She said the request was an unconstitutional violation of the company’s fourth amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches.

In January, the department sued Oracle, another large tech company, claiming it paid white men more than others, leading to pay discrimination against women and black and Asian employees. Oracle claimed the case was “politically motivated” and said its employment decisions were based on merit and experience.

Because some may not negotiate as favorably as others is no reason to violate constitutional rights: the law must allow all citizens the right to climb the corporate ladder or stay in the mail-room, to speak up and ask for raises or be happy where you are. Men may ask more because they are often the sole-breadwinner, and women less so. Assertive people may, or may not, get the raise.

This nation was founded on the principle of freedom, grounded in the Constitution, that allows freedom of association, right to privacy, and protection from unreasonable searches. Efforts to force companies to pay individuals or groups like amounts or to disclose publicly those amounts flies in the face of those principles. Many jobs, such as civil service, have titled jobs that have set salaries, so anyone working there is paid equally. But many other jobs depend on the supply and demand of certain workers and job skills, so employers compete in the free marketplace for those workers by salary enticements. These freedoms helped to build the greatest economy in the world, allowing Americans to prosper and enjoy an equally great standard of living. That is how Google flourished.

Imagine if feminists got their way and Google – or your employer – had to make public your salary and justify why you get paid more than Joe or Sally, and “because we need to maximize profits” or “because it’s a free country” are not acceptable answers. If proven that a company actively paid women or others less, then that should be actionable and reasonable to pursue, but the fact that some groups flock to certain jobs with different salaries is no reason to assume discrimination.

If the DoL investigation is on the level, it will be precedent-setting evidence that there is no agenda to pay women less, but there is a goal to make a profit out of providing a product that people want – that’s it.

If the DoL wanted to they could also find out things like:

• there are more female nurses than male because females seek those jobs far more (work with people, flexible hours, not dangerous)
• people who work more hours attain more experience, and hence can demand a greater salary than others
• people who work dangerous jobs command better pay
• jobs that require frequent travel command better pay
• people working the late shift earn extra pay
• people with special training or college degrees earn greater salaries

None of these reasons for greater pay have anything to do with discrimination, and are actually the rewards for extra efforts.

Facing the facts of the “wage gap” is complicated, isn’t it, Google?