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U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#3
"Oracle was far more likely to hire Asian applicants - particularly Indian people - for product development and technical roles than black, white or Hispanic job seekers."

Can the DOL back up this claim with salary data to see if Oracle is abusing the H1-B visa system by purposefully keeping wages low?

Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available (larger proportion of population entering tech filed via education or change of career).

It would be interesting to see how far DOL can stretch this.

Edit 1: Improvement

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#6

"Oracle was far more likely to hire Asian applicants - particularly Indian people - for product development and technical roles than black, white or Hispanic job seekers." Can the DOL back up this claim with salary data to see if Oracle is abusing the H1-B visa system by purposefully keeping wages low? Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available (larger proport…

" Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available "

- I doubt that. It's "easier" to hire because they "agree" to lower wages and its easier to retain them, because their visa status is tied to the employer. The employers have H1B workers on a leash.

The process of hiring an H1B worker in short.

- Hire an immigration lawyer.

- Post an LCA.

- Apply petition to USCIS.

- Pay petition fees (higher for fast track process)

- Respond to USCIS queries.

- Get petition approved.

- Done

- Its a different game if the employer wants retain the H1B worker after 6th year of H1B.

So hiring is not easy. But retaining and paying them is "easy". So why do these corporations take this much pain in hiring H1B workers ? No its not the skills they are after. (after all H1B is lottery based not skill based right ? )

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#7
> The department also said that during its investigation, which began in 2014, Oracle refused to provide relevant information about its pay practices.

That's the part that doesn't help Oracle at all in this.

If you really don't have anything to hide/cleanup, why avoid providing useful information for 2+ years? (Granted, 'relevant information' might be loosely defined here)

Tangent: I know several employers use the concept of a "salary band" for roles. I.e. entry level "Software Engineer" can make between $70k and $85k depending on some metric. I wonder how often our preconceived biases/prejudice are used as an excuse to put people in lower salary bands.

Is there even merit to these? On one hand, people have different skill levels even in a role. On the other, shouldn't the salary be tied to title?

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#8
The assumption underlying these "disparate impact" cases is that all races or genders have exactly the same distribution of skills. The problem is every time this assumption is tested it turns out to be false. https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#9
post #5

> technology company systematically paid its white, male employees more than other workers and unlawfully favored Asian applicants in its recruiting and hiring efforts. Wow...this is big.

And also not believable. The idea Oracle had a system that paid white guys more because they were white guys isn't credible without more than just salary evidence.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#10

The assumption underlying these "disparate impact" cases is that all races or genders have exactly the same distribution of skills. The problem is every time this assumption is tested it turns out to be false. https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

I would hope the DOJ would have to prove intent, that is, that they turned down applicants specifically because they were a particular race.
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