STANDOFF

Labor Dept. Sues Google Over Employee Diversity Data

Internet giant won’t comply, citing employees’ privacy.

Google could lose all government contracts after locking horns with the U.S. Department of Labor over its employee-compensation data. The Labor Department on Wednesday announced that it had filed a lawsuit against the internet giant after it refused to provide data on its equal-opportunity program, as required by law for federal contractors. According to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the request was made in September 2015 and Google refused to submit the data in question. The OFCCP now plans to ask a court to cancel all of the company’s government contracts and bar it from entering into any future contracts unless it complies. Google appears unwilling to give in, citing the privacy of its employees’ information. After providing hundreds of thousands of records over the past year, a spokesperson said, Google chose not to provide the requested data because “the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we’ve made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail.”