Two Apple employees file suit for alleged pay discrimination

CNN — New York (CNN) — Two female Apple employees sued the company Thursday, alleging the company paid women less than men for the same work.

The women are proposing a class-action lawsuit seeking to represent more than 12,000 current and former female employees in the engineering, marketing and AppleCare divisions.

Apple is not the first major technology company to face lawsuits over alleged gender discrimination. Google agreed in 2018 to pay $118 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, and Oracle agreed to pay $25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging underpaid female employees. Neither company has admitted wrongdoing.

The lawsuit focuses on Apple's hiring and performance review practices, which the women say have widened a pay gap between men and women.

California banned employers from asking applicants about their past salary in 2018. Instead, since January 2018, Apple has asked about salary expectations, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that Apple used salary expectation information to set starting salaries, which featured lower pay rates for women compared to men doing similar work.

The lawsuit also claims that performance reviews are biased against women because metrics such as teamwork and leadership tend to reward men and punish women. This can affect women's promotions and bonuses, the lawsuit claims.

Justina Jong, a customer and technical trainer and one of two plaintiffs, said in a statement from her lawyers that she noticed a W-2 left on the office printer by a male colleague.

“I noticed that he was paid almost $10,000 more than me, even though we did substantially similar work. This revelation made me feel bad,” Jong said in a statement.

The lawsuit also alleges that Jong was forced to work in a hostile work environment alongside a co-worker who had sexually harassed her.

The other plaintiff, Amina Salgado, said she complained repeatedly to Apple about the pay gap, according to the lawsuit. Salgado has held several positions for Apple since 2012, according to the complaint. Eventually, she said, Apple hired a third-party company to conduct an investigation, which found she was being paid less.

“As a result of the third-party investigation, in late 2023, Apple prospectively increased Ms. Salgado's compensation, but failed and refused to pay her back pay for the years in which she was paid less than men performing substantially similar work,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit claims class members are entitled to compensation for the loss of their fair wages, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The-CNN-Wire and © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. company. Discovery. All rights reserved.