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posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 23 2019, @03:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the wasting-experience dept.

Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser

Google pays $11 million to settle 227 age discrimination claims

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."

[... Cheryl Fillekes] 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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @12:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @12:29AM (#870543)

    Maybe they werne't white enough, weren't conservative enough, and had once been part of the free love or hippie movements.

    When I went to school the majority of teachers and all the administrators were rabidly conservative and anti-communist to the point of daily propaganda for most of k-3, if not k-6.