
Oracle allegedly underpaid $400M in wages to underrepresented employees - samfisher83
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/oracle-discrimination-400-million/
======
bondolo
I am a former Oracle employee, white male from Canada, who was underpaid based
on my immigration status and that continued after I became a permanent
resident. This seemed routine–Oracle tries to underpay _everyone_ and will use
whatever advantages they have to do so. If you've worked at Oracle for any
length of time you are probably not being competitively compensated unless you
make a regular fuss. Even if you make a fuss they may still do nothing betting
that you won't leave.

That said, I don't think it is entirely fair to pile on Oracle for this
problem. Oracle doesn't seem especially atypical of the rest of the industry
or even the bottom of the barrel. I saw much worse treatment at my first US
employer for myself and others. Mid-tier employers and body-shop consultancy
companies use underpaying people as a strategic core component of their
profitability.

I had prospective employers directly say that they were pleased they could use
my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they would offer
employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of paying me
competitive rates, bonuses, promotions.

If you want to end the abuses decouple visas and permanent resident
applications from the employer or make it much easier to maintain or continue
status and applications when moving between employers.

~~~
sokoloff
> they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they
> would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of
> paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions.

Offering that sponsorship has very real costs to the company, well into the
thousands of dollars per year. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for the
employer to deduct that cost relative to what another employee who doesn’t
bring those additional costs.

~~~
tonmoy
Isn’t that illegal?

~~~
ajcodez
I was in a similar position. It’s not really enforceable because if you
threaten to take legal action you get fired, and if you stop getting paid you
can’t afford lawyer fees, and if you stop working you’re in violation and have
to leave the country, and even if you win it’s unclear what you will gain. If
you have a family or partner you’re especially in a bind.

~~~
lsiebert
I believe you are supposed to register a complaint with the EEOC, after which
any adverse actions taken against you including firing without cause could
count as illegal retaliation (which isn't the case for just threatening legal
action), but I am not a labor attorney (or any sort of lawyer).

~~~
scarejunba
USCIS doesn't care about EEOC. And you try fighting your case from abroad.
Impossible. No one is going to do it.

------
jameane
One of my friends (white female) is a long time Oracle employee. Oracle
systemically underpays "underrepresented people." She ended up finding out she
was making 40-50% less than new interns were getting out of college. And was
underpaid compared to her male peers with less responsibility and impact.

She ended up getting a raise and additional stock to make up for it, after her
VP got involved to rectify the situation. Her boss was like "whatever."

So imagine if white women are underpaid - it is a lot worse for people for
color.

~~~
totallysnowman
Oracle pays its long-term employees less than newjoiners, that is no news. If
you think you can get a raise by switching positions within the company -
wrong! You get exactly the same no matter the position. Also nobody in the
office got a raise in years (not even the inflation rate). The only option to
get some raise is to be promoted, which does not happen very often. I don't
think it has anything to do with race/gender.

~~~
drugme
So your reaction also seems to be... "whatever".

~~~
totallysnowman
I was trying to say they don't seem racist or discriminating to me. They just
want to save as much as possible. But they seem rather oblivious to the fact
the system is set in a bit demotivating way.

~~~
vetinari
Of course that's not racist, despite the efforts to frame that as such.

Companies behave that way to _everyone_, get used to that. When you negotiate
your salary, you have your mouth. Use it. You are the only person, who really
cares, whether you earn adequately to what you bring to the table.

------
projectramo
Does the order of causality matter (either legally or ethically)?

What I mean to say is, the article suggests that Oracle hired women and
minorities to "funnel" them into low paying jobs.

What if they set a very low wage and only minorities and foreign students were
willing to accept those rates. Would that be just as bad?

The difference of course is that the former is a critique of Oracle whereas
the latter is a critique of the industry.

This wording struck me as odd:

 _Oracle “impermissibly denies equal employment opportunity to non-Asian
applicants for employment, strongly preferring a workforce that it can later
underpay. Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid
relative to their peers,” the complaint alleges._

Does that mean that people don't know the compensation associated with the
position during the hiring negotiation?

~~~
commandlinefan
I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech
companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech. Whether
underrepresented minorities are being underpaid or not the net result of all
of this will end up being everybody being paid less rather than a few people
being paid more.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
> I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech
> companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech

What do you mean by first move? Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, Adobe, Lucasfilm,
eBay and Intuit were all found guilty of colluding to keep engineer
compensation low[1][2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

[2] [http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-
order/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)

------
epicureanideal
> “These students required work authorization to remain in the United States
> after graduation,” the suit alleges. “In other words, Oracle overwhelmingly
> hires workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United
> States.”

Tech company abuses H1B or other visas to underpay staff and undercut local
labor market? Not surprising.

~~~
davidw
The fix to this is give more rights to H1B workers, so they aren't stuck with
one employer, rather than not letting them come in the first place.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
If H1B workers had the same rights and could demand similar salaries as their
local counterparts (while also requiring additional effort and costs to hire)
I suspect you would find that firms wouldn't hire very many H1B workers. in
effect both policies have the same result.

~~~
davidw
Eh, I suspect they would. Talented people are born throughout the world, and
historically, an 'unfair advantage' of the US has been our ability to attract
them. Look how many big companies were founded by a 1st or 2nd generation
immigrant.

It'd be a great way of letting the market figure out how many work visas we
need, in any event, rather than having a number someone plucked out of their
ass.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
That assumes no local candidate can do the work, there will be some exceptions
but why hire someone is more of an administrative hassle with greater costs
for no benefit? If the person in question is somehow better than a local
candidate by enough of a margin to justify the costs then they probably are
priced incorrectly. (IE miss classified as a junior dev as opposed to a
senior)

~~~
davidw
I'm pretty happy to let companies and candidates figure that out. If companies
are only hiring foreigners because of "cheap!", greater H1B freedom would
curtail that - or possibly just lead the company to open an office in another,
cheaper country. I don't think it's really the business of the government to
decide who is worthy and who isn't.

------
da_chicken
Here's a followup[0][1] to the OFCCP vs Google suit mentioned in the article.
Google showed it would cost more to produce the data than the value of the
Federal contract, so OFCCP did not get complete access.

[0]: [https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-
compliance/...](https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-
compliance/employment-law/Pages/Google-refusal-to-give-OFCCP-information-
upheld.aspx)

[1]: [https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-
deni...](https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-denial-of-
access-case)

~~~
pc86
I was curious to see what the OFCCP asked for and it seems like an insanely
huge undertaking to compile it, which was probably why the court ruled
"OFCCP's request was not reasonable and was unduly burdensome." My favorite
one is a tie between "salary and job history for each employee going back to
the founding of the corporation in 1998 for any long-term employees" without
defining long-term employees (perhaps OFCCP did define it?) and "the name,
address, telephone number and _personal_ email of every employee" in the
21,000-employee 2015 snapshot or the 19,539-employee 2014 snapshot.

~~~
sjg007
Doesn't seem that expensive to comply with this.

~~~
sokoloff
Imagine that you’ve changed payroll vendors, HR system vendors twice, and
payroll/HR leads 5x across the timeframe in question. Now how hard/costly is
it?

~~~
coredog64
Doesn’t Oracle sell a widely used financials package? I’m guessing they eat
their own dog food.

------
TheyCallMeMaxi
Ok, let me put this from another viewpoint. (I do not work for/endorse
Oracle.)

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Asian students (~90% Indian and Chinese)
flock to US universities for grad studies. They work hard, get a good GPA and
want to continue their stay here. When they apply for jobs, the pool is very
very limited because not all companies want to carry the burden of
VISA/lawyers/immigration etc.

Oracle is one of the handful of big firms that feed on such students. They
have the capital and resources to carry the immigration burden. And they hire
students in bulk. I personally know a lot of students-turned-Oracle employees
from all major universities.

At that point, the students just want to stay in the US legally, salary takes
a backseat. They know the fact that if they can stay for long, money will
eventually come.

~~~
purplezooey
Sure, the free market might allow it, but discrimination is something we don't
tolerate here.

~~~
existencebox
This is a hard question to ask because of how touchy this subject is, but I
promise this is a question born out of a situation I personally was in.

Does there need to be discrimination for the result to be skewed in this way?
The way I read the parent, immigrant employees are willing to do more for less
due to a logical judgement about their situation, and from a pool of
"Available jobs" may chose to throw a wider net, where someone who has more
leeway can be pickier. (In my situation, I was making negligible money and
when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted
off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far
below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being
done)

~~~
saghm
> I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-
> blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing
> until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort
> and my experience level for the work being done)

That still sounds like the company that made you the offer was exploiting you;
they took advantage of your tough situation to pay you less than they would
have if you had more leverage.

~~~
tomp
That’s called a win-win in negotiations.

Btw, all (well, most profitable) are always exploiting you - paying you less
than you produce for the company. You’re also always exploiting the company -
you’re making more money collaborating with pther employees than you would by
yourself!

~~~
saghm
I don't think I'd call "getting paid less than my colleagues doing the same
work because I'm more desperate" a "win-win"

------
ada1981
One of my coaching clients is a founder of a large SV tech company.

I love their salary negotiation method.

They have a top end in mind and will give the person the job if they agree on
anything up to the amount.

They leave room for negotiation as some people need to feel like they
negotiated well.

If you don’t negotiate your pay up to 100% the preset amount, after you accept
the job they just tell you they are paying you more (the 100%).

Both people are happy in this set up.

~~~
tom_mellior
So no matter what happens during the "negotiation", the end result is always
predetermined? They could just cut the silly game and come out and say what
they are going to pay.

~~~
travisjungroth
The comment stated why they do this and it's a real reason: some people want
to negotiate. They're happier being offered 100 and negotiating up to 110 vs
being offered 110 outright. This may be the tipping point of accepting or not.

~~~
ada1981
Yes, exactly this.

Some candidates would reject the offer if they weren’t given the experience of
negotiating more for themselves.

This strategy emerged over hundreds or thousands of hires as the founders came
from bigger companies before this one.

------
NearAP
I interviewed at Oracle, was made an offer but didn't take it. I know people
who took the offer. My knowledge/experience is

1) For H1B, the offer made by Oracle was higher than the minimum wage
guideline by DOL for those specific positions. You get a copy of the H1B
petition submitted by Oracle and it includes all of this data.

2) Your salary is dependent on what you negotiated with your recruitment
coordinator (Oracle will not change your figure once an offer has been sent to
you). The recruitment coordinator makes an offer and you try as much as
possible to counter. If you have prior work experience, you will most likely
use your previous salary information as a basis for negotiation. I assume this
figure you have quoted will form a basis for what Oracle will offer you. If
you don't have prior work experience, then of course, they will make you an
offer that they prefer.

3) Oracle pay increases are rare and typically small. This is why your
starting salary is quite important because it basically forms the basis for
your income for your years at Oracle

------
profalseidol
Everyone is underpayed. The work you are doing are mostly going to the pockets
who do nothing. Bitter truth.

------
digitalzombie
Programmers should have a union.

Especially the ones that are working in the gaming industry.

------
duxup
>Oracle’s underpayment of certain employees is driven by the company’s
reliance on prior salary information

Anyone know how that works exactly?

~~~
40acres
Discrimination is like compound interest, it builds upon itself. If you're a
underrepresented minority, its more likely that at each stage of your career
you've been low balled compensation wise, if a potential employer is going to
use your previous salary as a baseline, there is no way out of the spiral that
initially started with your first job.

~~~
duxup
I assumed that was the case as far as the systemic problem goes.

Just wondering how Oracle was determining past pay, just asking? Using some
site?

~~~
40acres
I assume they just ask, outside of the H1B database, I have not seen a 100%
credible representation of salary data for tech workers. Even then, the H1B
database is anonymous and you'd have to do a lot of work to try to pin someone
to a salary range.

For the common man, negotiating really isnt a skill that has been developed.
My girlfriend is interviewing with tech companies right now and I'm
consistently reminding her to state a higher number not only if they ask for
current salary (and to first off be diligent in not providing a number), but
for the eventual negotiation upon job offer.

Also, most people really aren't in a position to negotiate, especially if they
are in a discriminated class.

~~~
pc86
How does being in a discriminated class remove any of your "position" to
negotiate? If the person interviewing you is objectively racist or sexist
you're just not getting the job. But if you're talking about subconscious,
systemic issues that's going to come up in initial offers but how is going to
affect one's ability to negotiate?

And for what it's worth, while I am 100% on board with never discussing prior
salary, I would advise against outright lying about it. On the chance that
you're called out on it lying will most likely disqualify you immediately (and
forever).

~~~
toast0
> How does being in a discriminated class remove any of your "position" to
> negotiate?

In my experience, I've done my best negotiating when I'm almost disinterested,
which is usually when I have lots of other options. Someone in a discriminated
class may not get that many offers, so they may not be able to play them
against each other, or be comfortable pushing as far as they could given
there's some risk of an offer being rescinded.

------
CyanLite2
They've hired a total of 6 black people in the last 8 years and they claim
they're an equal opportunity employer?

~~~
throwawaywhynot
wtf. I call bullshit. Source? I regularly see people of all sorts of skin tone
as oracle has an office visible from my window. Maybe it's a US thing

~~~
CyanLite2
Read the lawsuit. Summary here: [https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-
sues-oracle-pay-di...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-sues-oracle-
pay-discrimination)

"According to the complaint filed today, Oracle hired around 500 people into
tech jobs over a five-year period, and only five were Hispanic and only six
were African American."

Correction: OP should have said 5 year period instead of 8 year period. Either
way. That's averaging one black person per year.

------
IloveHN84
Oracle isn't the only one, trust me

------
davesque
Positively shocking.

------
perpetualpatzer
Leaving aside the merits of the underlying claim, the word "withheld" in the
article's title seems a little misleading. I'd normally think of withholding
wages as refusing to hand out paychecks which had been agreed upon.

From the body of the article, the OFCCP seems rather to be claiming that
there's a differential in salary between female/black/asian employees and
white male employees and that foreign-born employees on student visas worked
disproportionately in entry-level jobs, which are lower-paying.

~~~
larrik
I agree, "withheld" is a specific term with a specific meaning when it comes
to employee payments. The headline does NOT match reality at all.

~~~
sctb
OK, we've gone with “underpaid” as in, “Once employed, women, Blacks and
Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers,” from the
complaint.

~~~
perpetualpatzer
Oh, great. Out of fairness to OP, the "withheld" wording was used in the
source article, but think this title is probably clearer.

------
justinph
Oracle did something unethical (and illegal)? Zero surprise.

------
tway111
This is is actually the case of "free market already taking care of this".
Most women can't negotiate effectively and end up with lower wages. Diversity
hires sometimes end up getting paid less.

------
anilshanbhag
There is no shortage of jobs for someone working at Oracle. If someone feels
underpaid, they can just jump ship. I have friends who work at Oracle and
their salaries are fairly competitive. I am no Oracle fanboy but this just
seems like a bunch of jobless federal employees dragging their feet around.

~~~
bobthepanda
This is only great advice if Oracle is the only one giving lower pay to
minority or female employees. Google is subject to a similar probe, and
Palantir had to settle with the government. And these are the cases that we
know about publicly.

Given that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe were conspiring to limit labor
competition, constant vigilance of tech companies' labor practices are totally
warranted.

~~~
dhh2106
How were they conspiring to limit labor competition?

Completely agree constant vigilance is important. It also shouldn't matter
that many employees can switch jobs. All employees cannot (personal
circumstances, visas, etc). It also doesn't waive the company of its
responsibility for fair pay.

~~~
njarboe
This lawsuit[1] should be better well known in tech circles. I think it is one
of the reasons salaries have been going sky-high at to top tech companies over
the last five years. It is really too bad the class action lawyers settled for
a relatively small amount and did not go to trial for a larger settlement and
to expose more info on what they did.

[1][https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-
in...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-intel-adobe-
settle-high-tech-workers-lawsuit/)

