The United States Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit against Palantir Technologies, amid accusations that the $20 billion Silicon Valley federal contractor and software company practices racial discrimination against job applicants who are Asians.
Founded by Alexander Karp, Palantir, a data mining firm and one of the most valuable private companies in the world, is best known for the assistance it provided to the United States government in tracking down Osama bin Laden. Among Palantir's clients are the United States Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the complaint filed by the Department of Labor, it was said that Palantir has been using a hiring process since January 2010 that prevented Asian applicants from being hired into the company on the basis of their race. The complaint claimed that Asian applicants were taken out of the hiring process during the resume screening and telephone interview stages, despite the applicants being qualified for engineering positions as white applicants.
In one of the examples that were included in the lawsuit, the Labor Department claimed that Palantir hired 11 Asian applicants and 14 non-Asian applicants from a pool of more than 1,160 applicants. The likelihood of such happening was one in 3.4 million, the lawsuit claimed, considering that 85 percent of the people making up the applicant pool were Asians.
At the heart of the case is the in-house referral system being used at the company, which is a common practice among Silicon Valley firms that allow current employees to nominate people they know for job openings. According to the Department of Labor, such a system only reinforces inequities that are already present in the workforce of a company.
The accusations against Palantir can be considered unusual in Silicon Valley, as major companies such as Apple and Facebook have actually received criticisms for workforces made up mostly of white and Asian employees and too few Hispanics and blacks.
The Labor Department is looking to end the racial discrimination in Palantir's hiring practices, with the lawsuit seeking to recover lost wages plus interest for the affected class, along with other benefits.
The company, through a statement, has denied the allegations, while expressing disappointment in the decision of the Department of Labor to go ahead with an administrative action.
According to Palantir, the claims of the department were based on a flawed and narrow statistical analysis on three job descriptions that were posted between 2010 and 2011, and so the company intends to vigorously defend against the accusations.
