LinkedIn has signed the California Equal Pay Pledge (Photo by Katja Knupper/Die Fotowerft/DeFodi ... [+]
LinkedIn has become the latest company to sign California’s Equal Pay Pledge. California’s First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom initiated the pledge in 2019 to build upon California’s equal pay laws and shrink the gender wage gap in the state. She announced today that the professional networking platform had become the latest and one of the largest companies to sign the pledge.
By signing the pledge, LinkedIn has committed to conducting an annual company-wide gender pay analysis, reviewing its hiring and promotion procedures to reduce unconscious bias and structural barriers, and promoting best practices to help close the pay gap. Siebel Newsom’s office announced the signing today, although the company officially signed on October 19.
LinkedIn has had problems with unequal pay allegations in the past. Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay $1.8 million to nearly 700 female workers in California after the Department of Labor (DOL) alleged these workers were subjected to “systemic, gender-based pay discrimination.” In a report, the DOL claimed that LinkedIn “did not provide equal pay to the affected female workers in its engineering and marketing job groups in San Francisco, and its engineering and product job groups in Sunnyvale.”
The settlement applied to women who worked in the Sunnyvale and San Francisco offices from 2015 to 2017. (This includes the time before and after Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn in 2016). As part of the settlement, LinkedIn agreed to evaluate its pay policies to ensure the company’s compensation is gender-neutral.
Although LinkedIn agreed to the settlement with the DOL, it denied the government’s claims. In a press release, the company wrote, “While we have agreed to settle this matter, we do not agree with the government’s claims; LinkedIn pays and has paid its employees fairly and equitably when comparing similar work.”
In fact, the company claimed that a 2021 equal pay analysis revealed that “for every $1.00 earned by men, our female employees earn $0.999.” But, given only 27.8% of technical roles at the networking company are held by women, there’s still work to be done.
More generally, women employed full-time in California earn only 88 cents for every dollar a man earns, and mothers earn 77 cents for every $1 earned by a father. For women of color, the situation is worse. Nationally, Black women make, on average, 64 cents, Latina women 54 cents, and Native women 51 cents for every dollar earned by a man. California women are estimated to lose a whopping $87 billion yearly due to the gender pay gap.
By signing California’s Equal Pay Pledge, LinkedIn is publicly committing to honing its efforts to ensure its employees earn equal pay for equal work. The company joins over sixty major California employers who have already signed the pledge, including the State of California, Adobe, Airbnb, Apple, AT&T, eBay, Mattel, Nextdoor, Salesforce, Twitter and Uber.
First Partner Siebel Newsom commented on LinkedIn’s signing, “When companies like LinkedIn take the lead on this issue and sign the Equal Pay Pledge, we’re able to make tremendous progress towards true societal change. I encourage Californians to look at the companies they purchase from and ensure they have signed the pledge.”
Today, LinkedIn also announced its progress in creating a more diverse work environment. The company reports that women now represent 45% of LinkedIn’s global leadership (director and above), but women’s representation in technical roles is still lagging under 30%. Across all LinkedIn employees, Black employees make up 7.2%, Latino employees 7.4% and women represent 47%.
