As reported in Bloomberg Law, the U.S. government is now collecting detailed race and gender pay data from thousands of companies in an effort to eliminate wage discrimination in the workplace.

As equal pay continues to be a forefront issue, many companies are being pressured to report pay data to shareholders while workers nationwide are demanding wage transparency from their employers.

Bloomberg notes that some U.S. companies have begun conducting independent pay audits, either in response to activist shareholder proposals to release their data or a general cultural shift. As Bloomberg explains, these efforts, unlike measures mandated by the government, are not standardized and can be significantly filtered/edited by the reporting companies.

Lieff Cabraser partner Kelly Dermody, who represents workers in gender discrimination cases against Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Google, said many of the self-released pay audits conducted by companies are “essentially worthless” because they usually aren’t required to use the right criteria to compare similar workers.

“When you see things like that, it’s worth a healthy dose of skepticism,” Dermodysaid. “I’m impressed by companies who find discrepancies and fix them. A lot of what we see is a defense of the status quo.”

Read the full article on Bloomberg Law’s site (subscription).

About Kelly Dermody

The Chair of Lieff Cabraser’s employment practice group and Managing Partner of Lieff Cabraser’s San Francisco office, Kelly M. Dermody specializes in class and collective actions on behalf of plaintiffs in employment and consumer cases, including gender discrimination cases against Google and Goldman Sachs. Her additional case work includes wage suppression claims against technology, healthcare, and academic institutions; overtime and lost pay lawsuits for low-wage workers, I/T professionals, and foreign nationals working for American corporations; and ERISA claims that she has tried on behalf of employees and retirees for pension plan abuses.

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