The social media titan will pay up to $ 14.3 million in separate settlement agreements, the US government said.
from Bloomberg
Published on 19th Oct 2021
Facebook Inc. reached an agreement with the US government on allegations of discriminating against domestic workers by reserving thousands of jobs for foreigners with H-1B temporary visas.
Facebook agreed to pay up to $ 14.3 million in separate settlement agreements with the Department of Justice and Labor, the government said on Tuesday.
“Facebook is not above the law and must comply with our state’s federal civil rights laws that prohibit discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
Facebook has effectively stopped Americans from applying for certain positions at the Menlo Park, Calif.-Based company and reserved those positions for foreign H-1B visa holders, Justice and Labor Department officials said during a briefing with reporters.
The social media company agreed to a $ 4.75 million fine and provided an additional $ 9.5 million to victims of the company’s discrimination, the Justice Department said. “This deal reflects the civil rights department’s commitment to holding employers accountable,” said Clarke.
The company’s shares rose 1.3% to $ 339.74 at 3:08 p.m. in New York.
Facebook said in a statement sent via email that while the company believes it meets government standards for labor certification practices, it has made arrangements to advance its entire immigration program and support its highly skilled visa holders seeking permanent residence.
Facebook is under pressure on several fronts, particularly after a former employee, Frances Haugen, shared thousands of pages of internal research and documents with the media and testified before Congress. She claims the company prioritized profit while it fueled the division, undermined democracy and harmed the mental health of its youngest users.
Last month the Wall Street Journal published some of Haugen’s internal research, who testified before a panel of the Senate Commerce Committee on October 5. At the hearing, she accused Facebook of not prioritizing the wellbeing of its users. The company’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, denied the characterization, saying it was “just not true.”
Antimonopoly laws
The company is also battling a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit alleging the company violated antimonopoly laws and tried to reverse its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Facebook in December alleging the company “refused to recruit, consider, or hire skilled and available US workers for over 2,600 jobs,” and instead the jobs – with one Average salary of $ 156,000 – non-citizens she sponsored with green cards for permanent work permits.
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