Uh oh, Microsoft! The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) just hit them with a cool $14.4 million settlement. Why? Because according to the CRD, Microsoft wasn’t exactly playing nice with employees who needed to take leave.
The CRD investigated for a few years and found that Microsoft might have been penalizing employees who took parental leave, disability leave, or even just leave to care for a sick family member. These penalties could have been anything from smaller bonuses to bad performance reviews.
Sounds pretty rough, right? The CRD says this made it harder for employees to get raises and promotions, and it mostly hurt women and people with disabilities. Microsoft says the CRD is wrong, but they’ve still agreed to listen to their employees and make some changes.
So, what’s the outcome? Microsoft is forking over $14.2 million to the employees who were affected. This includes anyone in California who worked at Microsoft between May 2017 and whenever the court approves the settlement, and who took a leave protected by law. Everyone gets at least $1,500, with some folks getting more depending on how much they earned and how long they were with Microsoft.
On top of the money, Microsoft has to make sure this doesn’t happen again. This means training managers on leave policies and hiring someone to keep an eye on things. With over 7,000 employees in California alone, Microsoft has a lot of workers who hopefully won’t have to worry about getting penalized for taking a break when they need it.
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