Google experienced a setback in the suit that is age related this week. A judge urged other software engineers that are over 40 who had interviews with the company but were not hired to join in the lawsuit against Google.
The suit was filed by two applicants that are both over 40 years who were interviewed by the company but were not offered the job.
What this means is that the judge has turned the case into a “collective action” such that people who were interviewed by Google in person for the position of site reliability, software engineer, systems engineer position at the age of 40 years or even older and were not offered employment before August 28, 2014, can join in the suit against Google.
Although the development is not one that Google will be happy about since the suit is focusing more on how it can include more people, this does not mean that Google will lose the case.
A spokesperson for the company said the company is fighting the suit, pointing out that the allegations lack merits, and that the company has policies that guard against discrimination on any level including age.
However, this does not seem to move the judge who has not even shown interest in the defense that Google is putting up as made known in the ruling.
The judge noted that having the said policy does not automatically shield a company from lawsuits that border on discrimination especially since there is evidence presented against the company.
One of the plaintiffs alleged that she was asked by a Google recruiter to put down her date of graduation on her CV so that the interviewers could see it. She also said that 7 other applicants had the same experience with the company. She also made available evidence that showed that Google’s workforce median age is 29 while what is acceptable in the US is 42.8 years old for programmers.
The company has close to 61, 000 employees and was asked if it has made its median age public yet to which the company failed to give an answer to.
There is something Google calls “Greyglers” on campus which is for employees of the company that is over 40 intended to help promote the awareness of age diversity.
The company was sued for the same issue way back in 2004 and after going through appeal had to resort to settling out of court for an amount that was undisclosed.
However, this new lawsuit that is calling on others that were interviewed by the company who are of the age of 40 is one of a kind. Some programmers outside Google are of the opinion that such move will make matters worse.
One of them said that this will make companies avoid resumes of people who are in their late 30s as they will not get responses or phone screens.
