Google and Its Informed Approach to Compensating Employees: Just Pay Less
September 23, 2021
Google does have unethical business practices, including violating user privacy, discriminating treat of ethnic minorities and women in its hiring activities and work environment, and attempting to establish a business relationship with China. Another infraction to add to Google’s growing list is: “Google Underpaid Thousands Of International ‘Shadow Workers,’ Violating Labor Laws Around The World, Report Reveals” says Business Insider.
Google employs over 900 temporary workers in Poland, France, Netherlands, Germany, India, Ireland, and the UK. Pay-parity laws in Asia and Europe require companies to pay full-time and temporary workers the same wage if they essentially do the same job. Google underpaid its workers in violation of these laws.
Google’s compliance department discovered the error, but did not want to bring attention to the issue. Instead Google raised wages for new employees in order to avoid financial, reputational, and legal problems. Google is still attempting to save face:
“While the team hasn’t increased the comparator rate benchmarks for some years, actual pay rates for temporary staff have increased numerous times in that period,’ Spyro Karetsos, Google’s chief compliance officer, said in a statement to Insider. Most temporary staff are paid significantly more than the comparator rates.
‘Nevertheless, it’s clear that this process has not been handled consistently with the high standards to which we hold ourselves as a company,’ he added. ‘We’re doing a thorough review, and we’re committed to identifying and addressing any pay discrepancies that the team has not already addressed. And we’ll be conducting a review of our compliance practices in this area. In short, we’re going to figure out what went wrong here, why it happened, and we’re going to make it right.’”
Google certainly has the funds to make it right. Google should be treating all of its employees, no matter their status, equality. If Google had admitted the mistake, they would have looked like the bigger person, been criticized or praised, then the world would have forgotten the incident. Now Google can add this to their list of personnel management achievements.
High school behavior? Intentional disregard for employee rights? We don’t know.
Whitney Grace, September 23, 2021
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