Media: Google has underpaid freelance employees for years. She owed them over $100 million

Google could have violated labor laws in dozens of countries. The media found out that the corporation for at least two years consciously paid freelance employees less than those who were on the staff. To hide this, she distorted quarterly financial reports.

This is reported by The New York Times and The Guardian with reference to internal documents.

According to the media, until May 2019, Google’s management did not know that the corporation was violating the so-called “wage parity laws.” They require employers to pay employees in similar positions equally. It doesn’t matter if a person is on the staff or not. Currently, such laws are in force in 31 countries: in the European Union, Great Britain, India and Taiwan.

But instead of solving the problem, Google tried to hide it. Managers were worried that if they suddenly raised their salaries, it would lead to increased costs in departments that work mainly with freelance employees. It could also attract too much public attention, up to lawsuits, despite the fact that Google has been criticized more than once for the unequal treatment of its employees.

As a result, the corporation decided that it would still increase salaries, but only to new employees – those who will get a job at Google in 2021. Google postponed the larger changes for later.

It was only in June 2021 that the story of non-payments was continued. The legal organization Whistleblower Aid has complained about Google to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She stated that for nine years the corporation owed freelance employees over $ 100 million and did not report the debt (as well as the risk associated with it) to investors. Google should have reflected this information in its quarterly financial reports.

Last week, Google began making changes to the base rate for freelance employees. At the same time, the company pointed out that although the rates had not changed for several years, the actual salary of such workers was still growing and Google often paid even more than required.

“It is quite obvious that this process [the salary increase] was not carried out in accordance with the high standards that we adhere to,” said Spyro Karetsos, director of compliance at Google. “We’re going to find out what went wrong here and why it happened. And then we intend to fix everything.”

Now Google employs 150 thousand freelance employees. Most of them are contractors who are engaged in long—term projects like content moderation and have little interaction with other employees of the corporation. Note that it is not Google itself that pays them, but recruitment agencies. Nevertheless, Google sets salary rates for them.