MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—An administrative law suit was filed by the U.S. Department of Labor against Mountain View-based Google Inc. on Wednesday, January 4. In the lawsuit, the Department of Labor requested information as part of a routine evaluation of Google’s compliance with equal opportunity laws and that Google allegedly refused to share certain employee information.
If the Department of Labor wins the lawsuit, and Google refuses to provide the requested information, the company could be barred from receiving future federal contracts and all current contracts will be voided. The lawsuit further states that the Internet company was selected at random for the study.
Google indicated in a statement that the unfilled requests are either too broad or contain some confidential employee data that includes their private contact details and that they have given hundreds of thousands of records over the last year.
The missing information is part of a larger request of employee job and salary history as of September 1, 2014, and September 1, 2015, including names and contact information of the workers, states the lawsuit.
“We’re very committed to our affirmative action obligations and to improving the diversity of our workforce,” said Google.
“Like other federal contractors, Google has a legal obligation to provide relevant information requested in the course of a routine compliance evaluation. Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so,” said U.S. Department Compliance Program Director Thomas Dowd in a statement.
“We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation,” said Dowd.
