Google Says It Would Cost Too Much to Gather Wage Gap Data

The Department of Labor will have to keep bugging Google for the salary records it’s been asking for, because the tech titan keeps refusing to hand them over. Those records might be able to prove once and for all whether Mountain View truly pays women a lot less than it does men. If you’ll recall, the Labor Department is accusing the big G of “systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce” and is suing the company for its salary information. Well, the company has just told a federal court that it won’t gather the info the DoL wants because it would be much too expensive.

Google said it would have to spend more than $100,000 and up to 500 hours to be able to fulfill the DoL’s request. That’s such a small amount for a tech titan that Ian Eliasoph, one of the agency’s lawyers, pointed out that the company has a $28 billion annual income. “Google would be able to absorb the cost as easy as a dry kitchen…