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BusinessMicrosoftTech

Microsoft to pay $14.4 million for penalizing parental leave

Taking leave shouldn't hurt your career.

By
Shubham Sawarkar
Shubham Sawarkar's avatar
ByShubham Sawarkar
Editor-in-Chief
Shubham Sawarkar is a technology journalist at GadgetBond, covering Apple, AI, consumer technology, software, gadgets, and product launches. His work explores emerging technologies, industry developments, product...
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- Editor-in-Chief
Jul 4, 2024, 2:55 PM EDT
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A colorful 3D rendering of the Microsoft logo. The logo consists of four squares with rounded corners arranged in a square formation. The top-left square is colored red, the top-right square is colored green, the bottom-left square is colored blue, and the bottom-right square is colored yellow. A colorful rainbow wraps around the four squares.
Image: Microsoft
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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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