Reports revealed: Google has illegally underpaid thousands of temp workers

Recently, The Guardian and New York Times reportsrevealed that Google underpaid thousands of international contract workers,violating pay-parity laws in several countries.

In December, a group of Google managersdiscovered that the temporary staffs of the company had been underpaid fromsome years.

The NYT reports revealed that the gap betweenfull time employees and temporary workers were quite significant. The shockingrevelations were made after reviewing the company’s emails and documents. Thiswas especially problematic in countries with so-called pay parity lawsrequiring the company to pay temporary workers the same wages as full-timeemployees in similar positions.

According to The Guardian, Google employsover 900 temporary workers throughout the UK, Ireland, India, Germany, theNetherlands, France, and Poland - all of which enforce local pay-parity laws.

In response to The Guardian, Google acceptedthe mistakes related to the underpaying of several temporary staff. The techgiant has also assured of an investigation into the matter. 

Google’s Ireland-based manager Alan Barry saidthis could have given “rise to a flurry of noise/frustration."

“I'm also not keen to invite the charge thatwe've allowed this situation to persist for so long that the correctionrequired is significant,” Barry wrote in an email which was quoted in the NYTreport.

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Spyro Karetsos, Google’s chief complianceofficer, said in a statement, “While the team hasn’t increased the comparatorrate benchmarks for some years, actual pay rates for temporary staff hasincreased numerous times in that period.”

“Nevertheless, it’s clear that this processhas not been handled consistent with the high standards to which we holdourselves as a company. We’re doing a thorough review, and we’re committed toidentifying and addressing any pay discrepancies that the team has not alreadyaddressed. And we’ll be conducting a review of our compliance practices in thisarea. In short, we’re going to figure out what went wrong here and why ithappened, and we’re going to make it right,” he added.