U.S. Labor Department headquarters in Washington DC. Credit: Mike Scarcella / ALM

The U.S. Labor Department has dropped its appeal seeking broad access to internal Google Inc. salary records, part of a federal compliance review looking at alleged pay disparities at the technology company.

The Labor Department had appealed an administrative law judge's 2017 ruling that said the demands for Google's workplace records were “over-broad, intrusive on employee privacy, unduly burdensome and insufficiently focused on obtaining the relevant information.”

Google was one of several major U.S. companies that would face the glare of the Labor Department Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP, at the end of the Obama administration. The Labor Department's appeal had been pending for more than a year.

“After careful consideration, OFCCP has decided to enforce the ALJ order and complete its compliance review on the merits consistent with the terms of its newly issued directives on transparency and predetermination notices,” Craig Leen, director of the compliance office, said in a statement. “OFCCP views this as the most effective means of reaching final resolution with Google.”

Google's lawyers at the law firm Jackson Lewis, including Lisa Sween, the San Francisco office managing principal, did not immediately comment Monday. A representative for Google declined to comment.

The Labor Department said it will seek to enforce the administrative law judge's order from July 2017. That order by the San Francisco judge granted the company some protection from giving its data to the agency.

Dropping the appeal, the Labor Department lawyers, led by former Kirkland & Ellis partner Kate O'Scannlain, said it would “complete its compliance review on the merits consistent with the terms of its newly issued directives on transparency and predetermination notices.”

The directive, issued in September under the agency's new Trump-era leaders, seeks to “facilitate consistency, improve efficiency and collaborative resolution, and also supports contractors' ability to conduct meaningful self-audits to proactively identify and address issues with their employment practices.”

Some management-side attorneys said the new push from the compliance office did not go far enough to alleviate business concerns. Still, the directives were largely viewed as a business-friendly approach to auditing contractors. An adverse finding against a contractor could imperil existing and future contracts.

The DOL's compliance review dates to 2015, when the agency asked the company to provide certain compensation records as part of a scheduled audit. Labor Department lawyers sued Google in January 2017. The head of the office at the time, Thomas Dowd, said then: “Despite many opportunities to produce the information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so.”

 

The Labor Department's filing is posted below:

 

 

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