Pfizer will cough up $2 million to settle allegations from the U.S. Department of Labor that it underpaid certain women who were employed at the company’s New York City headquarters.
As the Department of Labor sees the situation, Pfizer “discriminated against” 86 women over a two-year period in 2015 and 2016. The alleged actions, uncovered during an agency compliance review, violated the Equal Employment Opportunity executive order, according to the department.
Pfizer denies the allegations, calling the instances in the audit “minor pay discrepancies from over seven years ago among a small group of employees at a single location,” the company said in an emailed statement.
“While Pfizer maintains that all pay differences were based on appropriate business factors and were not discriminatory, Pfizer made the decision to resolve this dispute due to the amount of time that has transpired and the need to focus on its core business initiatives,” the statement continued.
The $2 million settlement will cover back wages and interest for the impacted employees, the Department of Labor said in a release. In addition, the company will also have to set aside $500,000 for future potential salary adjustments.
The department added that the company must “review and revise” its compensation system under the settlement. But, according to Pfizer, this is “inaccurate and does not reflect the terms that the parties reached.”
This summer, Eli Lilly similarly paid out more than $2 million to settle discrimination claims. A lawsuit from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accused the company of under-hiring older candidates for its sales representative positions after changing its hiring preferences in 2017 in favor of millennials.