The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has filed a complaint today alleging that software company Oracle has routinely underpaid its Black, Asian and women workers. OFCCP alleges that Oracle’s practices created a total loss of $400 million for minority employees.
The agency said in its amended complaint that Oracle relied on prior salaries in setting employees’ pay and put minority workers in lower paying positions throughout the company. OFCCP said the company had been using discriminatory pay practices since at least 2013.
OFCCP’s original lawsuit against Oracle was filed in January 2017. The agency has since updated the lawsuit to show more analysis of the company’s compensation practices.
The amended suit claims that Oracle “strongly preferred Asian recent college and university graduates than to all others” and it gave preference to visa-holding Asian graduates who depended on the company for authorization to work in the US. The OFCCP says this directly relates to the wage gap at the company.
According to the suit, 90 percent of Oracles recent graduate hires from 2013 to 2016 were Asian. It also revealed that there were several years where the company did not hire any African American or Latino recent graduates.
“It even has a program to hire a set number of recent graduates from Indian schools each year,” the lawsuit said. “This preference for a workforce that is dependent on Oracle for authorization to work in the United States lends itself to suppression of the workforce’s wages.”
OFCCP has previously filed compliance lawsuits against Google and Dell. In 2017, the agency filed a lawsuit against Google for failing to submit compensation data. OFCCP requested the information in 2015 as part of an audit. Last year, OFCCP reached a settlement with Dell where the company was required to pay $2.9 million in back wages to remedy alleged pay discriminatory practices against African American women.
