LinkedIn Resolves Alleged Pay Discrimination with OFCCP

OFCCP analyzed LinkedIn’s compensation system through regression and other analyses

During a routine compliance evaluation, the Office of Federal Contracts Compliance Programs (OFCCP) found that between March 1, 2015, and March 1, 2017, LinkedIn Corporation in San Francisco and Sunnyvale failed to pay affected female workers equal wages to their male counterparts. To resolve the allegations, LinkedIn entered into a conciliation agreement (CA) and agreed to pay $1.8 million in back wages and interest to affected class members, conduct staff compliance training, and perform three years of analyses to determine if the company’s compensation is gender-neutral. The company also agreed to make salary adjustments when salary issues are discovered.

The affected class members include female workers in positions in LinkedIn’s Engineering and Marketing job family groups in San Francisco and its Engineering and Product job family groups in Sunnyvale. Using regression and other analyses, OFCCP found “certain statistically and practically significant pay disparities in annual base salary based on gender after controlling for legitimate explanatory factors.”

To come to their conclusion, OFCCP “reviewed employment policies, practices and records; interviewed management, human resources, and non-management employees; analyzed individual employee compensation data and other evidence; observed a live demonstration of LinkedIn’s Compensation Analysis Tool and conducted an onsite inspection of the worksite.”

OutSolve’s Take

The LinkedIn settlement points out OFCCP’s commitment to pay equity over the years during several presidential administrations. The agency’s release of Directive 2022-01: Pay Equity Audits falls short of providing contractors with any tangible guidance on how to look at their pay systems but CA’s like this one point out that OFCCP is using regression and other statistically analyses to evaluate compensation. Directive 2022-01 does point out that OFCCP may require contractors to provide complete copies of their internal pay equity audits.

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