Facebook has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor to pay $ 14 million in a discrimination case against American workers. The tech giant was sued at the end of 2020 by the Donald Trump government for illegally reserving places in its hiring for highly trained foreigners. The amount represents the largest fine collected by the civil rights area of the US Justice in 35 years and is a new blow to the technological colossus a few weeks after a series of leaks that has further undermined its reputation.
“Facebook is not above the law and must comply with federal laws that prohibit discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices,” said Kirsten Clarke, prosecutor for the civil rights area in a statement issued by the Department of Justice. Mark Zuckerberg’s company will pay 4.75 million dollars to the government and another 9.5 million to some of the victims. Part of the agreement reached also obliges the company to train its employees on internships to avoid discrimination and to expand horizons in its search for job candidates.
The agreement announced this Tuesday can be framed in the perspective of Donald Trump’s “America First”. The lawsuit against Facebook was initiated in December 2020 by the Department of Justice in the last days of the administration of the Republican president, who came to power with the promise of defending the interests of the American workforce forgotten by the development of other economies . The prosecutor initiated the lawsuit after observing that at least 2,600 positions were offered, between January 2018 and September 2019, for foreigners with H-1B visas. This visa is for highly trained foreign personnel who can fill specialist vacancies. Facebook promised to regularize with a permanent residence, the famous green card, to those who were hired under that scheme.
Facebook, the lawsuit claims, “used designer recruitment methods to discourage US workers from applying for certain positions, such as requiring that applications be mailed only; he refused to consider the US workers who applied for these positions and only hired those who had a temporary visa. ” The Department of Justice, after an investigation carried out earlier this year, considers that the company violated the same norms that prevent immigrants from being rejected in a hiring process: that no one can be discriminated against by an employer because of their citizenship or their situation migratory.
The demand was perceived by analysts as an escalation in tensions between the Silicon Valley giants and the Trump administration, critical of the number of foreigners in the tech industry. The Republican Administration rejected 21% of H-1B visa applications in 2019, a sharp increase from the 6% that was denied four years earlier, still under the Barack Obama administration. Trump totally banned these types of visas on two occasions. The first newcomer to power, in 2017. The second in June 2020, a decision taken in the midst of the pandemic, which was overthrown by the Judiciary in court.
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