New York: Facebook agreed to pay up to $14.25 million on Tuesday to resolve accusations that the business discriminated against American employees brought by the federal government in the last days of the Trump administration.
According to a news release, the settlement with the Justice Department includes payments to the government of $4.75 million and up to $9.5 million to “qualified victims of Facebook’s claimed discrimination.” The total payment is the agency’s biggest ever for breaches of the Immigration and Nationality Act’s anti-discrimination clause. Separately, the business resolved concerns made by the Labor Department earlier this year about whether it had broken labor rules.
The accusations are part of the Trump administration’s drive to persuade the country’s largest tech businesses to recruit more Americans. The government toughened the conditions for receiving an H-1B visa, which is popular among technology businesses that hire foreign employees, including raising the salary that companies must pay workers under the programme. The government examined Facebook for two years, looking into whether the corporation favored H-1B visa holders and other temporary foreigners over Americans. Prosecutors eventually concluded that the firm failed to make more than 2,600 positions — with an average pay of $156,000 — equally accessible to Americans and other Americans as they were to foreigners.
Andy Stone, a Facebook representative, stated that the business thought it had satisfied all of the government’s requirements, but that the settlements would allow it to go forward. The agreements agreed with the federal government on Tuesday demonstrate how the social media behemoth is fighting Washington authorities on several fronts.
The Federal Trade Commission has charged Facebook with breaching antitrust rules when it bought WhatsApp and Instagram, two businesses that the agency says could have become larger challenges to Facebook if they hadn’t been bought.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook has made immigration reform a crusade. In 2013, he assisted in the formation of an organization called FWD.us, which has advocated for reforms to the immigration system. And he weighed in on the immigration topic as Trump launched his crackdown on foreigners entering the country.
Source: Indian Express
