Coinbase at Center of Gender and Race Discrimination: Underpays Women and Black Employees

On Dec 30, 2020 at 12:57 pm UTC by · 3 min read

The internal payroll data for 2018 included salary details for 80% of the firm’s almost 1,200 employees. The data revealed that women at Coinbase were paid 8% or an average of $13,000 less compared to their male counterparts.

Reports have placed Coinbase at the center of gender and race discrimination as the San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange reportedly pays its black and female employees less than other people in the same positions. The unfair treatment of women and black employees was captured through an analysis of the internal pay data of the cryptocurrency exchange.

According to a report from the New York Times, Coinbase paid its Black employees almost 7% less than their peers, amounting to a difference of $11,500. The compensation gap between Black employees and whites with regards to the firm’s stock options also revealed a big disparity with the figure almost close to 11%.

The reports also state that Coinbase’s gender and race discrimination amongst its workers is at a much greater rate than the rest of the technology world. “The pay disparities at Coinbase appear to be much larger than those in the tech industry as a whole,” wrote Nathaniel Popper, a journalist with the New York Times adding that the few other tech companies that have had to release their data still didn’t match up what was happening at the San Francisco-based company.

The internal payroll data dated back to 2018 included salary details for almost 80% of the firm’s almost 1,200 employees. The data also revealed that women at Coinbase were paid 8% or an average of $13,000 less compared to their male counterparts with the same ranks at a fellow tech company or a comparable job.

Coinbase earlier on in November was again at the center of a gender and race discrimination scandal as the New York Times described the company was one that “has long struggled with its management of Black employees.” Although the executives of the crypto exchange at that time argued that those complaints were limited to just a few employees, the company’s compensation data in the new report proved otherwise. Preferential and discriminatory treatment towards both Black and female workers at the company was deeper than what the executives revealed.

Chief People Officer of the company, L.J. Brock in a letter to the employees of the firm in wake of the latest New York Times Story stated that Coinbase has been trying to make equal pay for equal work a must in the firm as part of an intense and deeper review of the company’s pay practices that since 2018.

Coinbase, before New York Times’ first publication about the company in November, also saw at least 5% of its employees leave the firm after facing an ultimatum of either accepting CEO Brian Armstrong’s “apolitical” policy or leaving the firm. The latest series of stories on the company now demonstrates a problematic system that isn’t going to get better anytime soon.

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