Apple Inc. has been sued by two female employees who claim the company “systematically” pays women less than its male colleagues for comparable work. The two employees are seeking to represent thousands of other women who allegedly face the same discrimination.
She claim that Apple, based in Cupertino, California, determined starting salaries before 2018 by asking employees about their salary history and that this practice “perpetuated historic pay gaps between men and women.”
When California banned the practice, the iPhone maker began asking about salary expectations, which perpetuated the inequality, the women claim.
“Apple’s policy and practice of collecting such information about salary expectations and using that information to determine starting salary has had a disparate impact on women, and Apple’s refusal to pay women and men equal pay for performing substantially similar work is simply not justified as a matter of law,” Joe Sellers, an attorney at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC who is representing the workers, said in a statement.
Insight into a W-2
Employees Justina Jong and Amina Salgado also claim that men regularly receive higher scores in teamwork and leadership in performance reviews at Apple, leading to lower bonuses and salaries for women.
Jong only realized that she was earning about $10,000 less than a male colleague when she saw his W-2 form on the office printer, the statement said.
A representative of Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit filed Thursday in California state court.
Lawsuits over wage discrimination against women in the technology industry have sometimes resulted in substantial settlements that have nevertheless led to one or two paychecks per person. The lawyers who filed suit on Thursday include those who have filed similar lawsuits against oracle Corp. and Google and won average payouts of $3,750 and $5,500 per person, respectively, after legal costs.
12,000 employees
Jong and Salgado filed the lawsuit on behalf of more than 12,000 current and former female employees in Apple’s engineering, marketing and AppleCare departments in California. Both have worked at Apple for more than a decade, according to the lawsuit.
Salgado had complained to Apple about the pay discrepancy “multiple times,” but despite its own investigations, Apple did not increase her salary until a third-party investigation concluded there was a pay gap between her and her male colleagues, the complaint says. According to her lawyers, she received no back pay.
Jong and Salgado are demanding an unspecified amount of the salary they say they are entitled to.
The Wall Street Journal had previously reported on the lawsuit.
The case is Jong v. Apple, Supreme Court of California, San Francisco County.