Facebook to settle $14.25m claims over U.S. employment infractions

Facebook will pay up to $14.25 million to settle civil claims brought by the U.S. government that the social media company discriminated against workers and violated other federal recruitment rules, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

The two related settlements were announced by the U.S. Justice Department and Labour Department.

The Justice Department announced last December that it was filing a lawsuit that accused Facebook of giving hiring preferences to temporary workers, including those who hold H-1B visas that let companies temporarily employ foreign workers in certain speciality occupations.

Such visas are widely used by tech companies.

Kristen Clarke, assistant U.S. Attorney-General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, called the agreement with Facebook, historic.

“It represents by far the largest civil penalty the Civil Rights Division has ever recovered in the 35-year history of the Immigration and Nationality Act’s anti-discrimination provision,” Clarke said in a call with reporters, referring to a key U.S. immigration law.

The case centred on Facebook’s use of the so-called permanent labour certification called the PERM programme.

The U.S. government said that Facebook refused to recruit or hire U.S. workers for jobs that had been reserved for temporary visa holders under the PERM programme.

It also accused Facebook of “potential regulatory recruitment violations.”

Facebook will pay a civil penalty under the settlement of $4.75 million, plus up to $9.5 million to eligible victims of what the government called discriminatory hiring practices.