Three women sue Google over alleged gender pay disparities

Three women Google workers filed a lawsuit against the company today, alleging the company discriminated against female employees "by systematically paying them lower compensation."

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, seeks class-action status and claims Google violated the California Equal Pay Act and other sections of the state labour code.

The allegations mostly add to the claims made earlier this year by the US Department of Labor, which has an ongoing litigation against Google over alleged gender pay disparities. A statistical regression analysis performed by the government found "systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce." But Google disputes the claims.

According to the lawsuit, Google "has channeled and segregated" women into career paths and "job ladders" that had lower compensation, in comparison with men having equal or lesser qualifications.

The case names three plaintiffs, with the first being Kelly Ellis, who joined Google in 2010 as a front-end software engineer on the Google Photos team. Although Ellis had four years of experience in software engineering, she was placed into Level 3 on her compensation "ladder," a level that mostly typically assigned to new college graduates, the complaint stated.

''Google has discriminated and continues to discriminate against its female employees by systematically paying them lower compensation than Google pays to male employees performing substantially similar work under similar working conditions,'' the lawsuit claims.

Google denied the allegations in an e-mailed statement. ''In relation to this particular lawsuit, we'll review it in detail, but we disagree with the central allegations,'' Gina Scigliano, senior manager of corporate communications at Google, wrote in an emailed statement. Scigliano added that Google has ''extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly.''

Earlier this month, The New York Times published salary data, compiled by nearly 1,200 Google employees, which pointed to disparities across pay grades in both salaries and bonuses across pay grades.