Google underpaid thousands of contract workers across dozens of countries: Report

According to reports, Google underpaid thousands of international contract workers, violating pay-parity laws in several countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem.

The tech giant’s compliance department discovered that it had been underpaying workers in UK, Europe and Asia since May 2019, but chose not to immediately compensate the underpaid temporary staff.

Instead, they only corrected rates for new employees in the hopes of avoiding legal, financial, and reputational damage, the Guardian reported citing access to internal Google documents and emails.

According to the New York Times, Alan Barry, a Google manager based in Ireland, feared that the dramatic pay increase would cause employees to “connect the dots” and "give rise to a flurry of noise/frustration."

“I'm also not keen to invite the charge that we've allowed this situation to persist for so long that the correction required is significant,” Barry wrote in an email, per the NYT.

Google admitted the failures and said it would conduct an investigation after being contacted by the Guardian.

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

“Most temporary staff are paid significantly more than the comparator rates.

“Nevertheless, it’s clear that this process has not been handled consistent with the high standards to which we hold ourselves as a company. We’re doing a thorough review, and we’re committed to identifying and addressing any pay discrepancies that the team has not already addressed.

“And we’ll be conducting a review of our compliance practices in this area. In short, we’re going to figure out what went wrong here, why it happened, and we’re going to make it right.”

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

Meanwhile, a whistleblower represented by Whistleblower Aid has filed a complaint about the alleged violations with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

(With inputs from agencies)