You might recall that last year, it was reported that a Google employee had filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly being too secretive. Of course it wasn’t because the employee planned to leak company secrets, but rather it was because Google’s policies prevents employees from discussing aspects of the company with outsiders, which the employee in question felt violated labor laws.It seems that Google’s secretive nature isn’t sitting too well with the US Department of Labor because the government organization has sued Google for not sharing information with them. What happened is that the Department of Labor wanted access to Google’s compensation data (salary) as part of a routine compliance evaluation, in which Google refused to share.
However since Google is considered a federal contractor, they are bound by law to allow the federal government to view their records as part of their compliance to the equal employment laws. Google claims that they have complied with the requests over the years, but according to a spokesperson, “However, 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.”
The Department of Labor has suggested that if Google continues to not comply with their requests, they will recommend that all of Google’s current government contracts be cancelled.