Google will pay $11 million to settle the claims of 227 people who say they were unfairly denied jobs because of their age, according to Friday court filings. The settlement must still be approved by the judge in the case.
The original lead plaintiff in the case, first filed in 2015, was a 60-something man named Robert Heath who says he was deemed a "great candidate" by a Google recruiter. The lawsuit said that in 2013, the median age of Google employees was 29, whereas the typical computer programmer in the US is over 40, according to several different measures.
During the interview process, Heath received a technical phone interview with a Google engineer. Heath alleged that the engineer had a heavy accent, a problem made worse by the engineer's insistence on using a speakerphone. When Heath was working through a technical problem, he asked if he could share his code using a Google Doc. The interviewer refused, Heath alleged. Instead, Heath had to read code snippets over the phone—an inherently error-prone process. Heath argued that the interview process "reflected a complete disregard for older workers who are undeniably more susceptible to hearing loss."
Heath also said that the interviewer assumed that the word "byte" meant eight bits. In his view, this also revealed age bias. Modern computer systems use 8-bit bytes, but older computer systems could have byte sizes ranging from six to 40 bits.Heath and Google settled their claims in December, but the larger class-action lawsuit went forward with another lead plaintiff—Cheryl Fillekes—who is in her early 50s and joined the case in 2016. She says she interviewed for engineering jobs at Google four times but was never offered a position.
During one interview process, Fillekes says, a recruiter requested that she submit an updated résumé that showed her graduation dates for college and graduate degrees. When Fillekes asked why this was required, she says the recruiter responded that it was "so the interviewers can see how old you are."
Of the $11 million payout in the settlement, $2.75 million will go to lawyers representing the class, Bloomberg reports. Fillekes will get an extra $10,000 as the lead plaintiff. The remaining cash works out to around $35,000 per plaintiff.
In addition to compensating plaintiffs, Google also promised to beef up its efforts against age discrimination, providing training to managers and creating a new committee to address age discrimination issues. Google is settling the case without admitting that it has done anything wrong.
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