In a lawsuit that could cost the company millions in federal contracts, Oracle America has been sued by the U.S. Department of Labor for discrimination.
According to the complaint, Oracle allegedly has a "systemic practice" of paying white male workers more than their non-white and female counterparts with the same job title.
The suit also states that Oracle favors Asian workers in its recruiting and hiring practices for product development and other technical roles.
Oracle, which designs, manufactures, and sells software and hardware products responded in a statement to TechCrunch that said, "The complaint is politically motivated, based on false allegations, and wholly without merit."
The lawsuit was filed after a compliance review of Oracle’s equal employment opportunity practices. During the investigation, Oracle refused to comply with the agency’s requests for employment data and records. The investigation began in 2014, and the DoL says that it tried to resolve the alleged discrimination violations for almost a year before filing the suit.
Oracle has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal government contracts. If the company fails to resolve the issue, it stands to lose all of its current government contracts and will be prohibited from receiving any future federal contracts.
Shortly after news of the lawsuit broke, Oracle uploaded the following diversity video to its YouTube account.
