Tag Archives: Employment & Career

Apple hit with lawsuit for allegedly underpaying female employees

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A class action lawsuit filed by two women against Apple seeks damages for 12,000 current and former female employees for allegedly underpaying them. The complaint says the tech giant “systematically” paid them a lower wage than their male employees over a four-year period.

The lawsuit filed in a California state court in San Francisco County on Thursday claims Apple’s systematic behavior of sexual discrimination stems from a policy that set employees’ salaries based on their previous employment, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Prior to fall of 2017, the complaint states that Apple used job applicants’ provided prior pay rates to set their starting salaries. The following year, Apple asked applicants for their pay expectations. The lawsuit alleges that both of these practices led to lower pay rates for women in the workplace. It also claims the latter policy of asking prospective employees for their pay expectations is “highly correlated with prior pay; studies show that persons asked for pay expectations generally provide a number slightly higher than the pay at their current or last job.”

The pay policy for job applicants created a pattern of lower pay for female employees, the lawsuit alleges: “Apple’s policy or practice of collecting information about pay expectations and using that information to set starting salary has had the effect of perpetuating past pay disparities and paying women less than men performing substantially similar work.” 

The lawsuit goes even further by suggesting that Apple regularly punishes female employees because of “scored categories” of job performances that drive pay bonuses and increases.

“Apple’s performance evaluation system is biased against women because for scored categories such as teamwork and leadership, men are rewarded and women are penalized for the same behaviors,” the complaint reads.

The class action lawsuit seeks payment for damages and “declaratory relief” as well as repayment of low earnings and benefits due to the alleged discrepancies by Apple. The plaintiffs are also asking the court to hold a jury trial to hear their complaint.

In 2022, reporters for the Financial Times talked with several female Apple employees who alleged they were the victims of sexual abuse and bullying on the job. Then when they filed complaints with human resources, they alleged that their cases were either minimized or ignored, or they received retaliation for filing their complaints.

One of the most jarring examples came from Apple’s former legal department director Jayne Whitt who says a colleague hacked into her devices and issued death threats. She filed a complaint with HR and was assured action would be taken. Whitt claims that Apple’s HR team not only failed to even reprimand the employee but they eventually fired her. She blew the whistle on Apple in an online essay describing the situation that prompted a wave of support and similar stories from other female Apple employees.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-hit-with-lawsuit-for-allegedly-underpaying-female-employees-214538519.html?src=rss

LinkedIn’s AI job coach can write your cover letters and edit your resumé

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Last year, LinkedIn began experimenting with AI-powered tools for job seekers on its platform. Now the company has added a bunch of new capabilities for its premium subscribers who are #OpentoWork, including personalized resumé, AI-assisted cover letters and more conversational job searches.

The changes are meant to speed up some of the most tedious aspects of looking for a new role. For example, the revamped job search feature now allows you to look for roles with queries like “find me a marketing job that’s fully remote and pays at least $100,000 a year,” or “find business development roles in biotech.” Those are all relatively simple descriptions but anyone who has searched for jobs on LinkedIn (without the help of AI) knows that it can often be a struggle to narrow down job listings with keywords.

Once you find a role you’re interested in, the built-in assistant can give you feedback on your qualifications and help with your application. You can upload a copy of your current resumé and LinkedIn’s AI will provide tips on what to update based on the job description. This can include suggestions on specific experiences to highlight or the ability to rewrite entire sections of the document. Likewise, LinkedIn can generate cover letters based on your experience and the job you want to apply for.

LinkedIn Job Seeker AI
LinkedIn

The company gave me a preview of these tools and I thought it did a surprisingly decent job for a first attempt at a cover letter. It incorporated specific details from my profile and the tone didn’t feel as robotic as much of the AI-written text I’ve encountered. Of course, as a journalist, I like to believe I can still write a better cover letter than an AI. But, I can see how the tool could be useful for people applying to dozens of jobs at once, especially since many companies use AI software to whittle down applications anyway.

LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv says that these tools are meant to be more of a jumping off point for users rather than an all-in-one solution. “What we want to do is make it easy for folks who have a difficult time telling their story, have a difficult time staring at a blank screen trying to put something together to at least get started,” he tells Engadget.

But he also notes that the company is still in the relatively early stages of its AI push and it could eventually automate more of the job application process. “The next horizon is going to be … can you just do that for me,” he says. “You can almost imagine people thinking about it from an agent standpoint, and helping you get things done.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedins-ai-job-coach-can-write-your-cover-letters-and-edit-your-resume-130033553.html?src=rss

OpenAI says it stopped multiple covert influence operations that abused its AI models

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OpenAI said that it stopped five covert influence operations that used its AI models for deceptive activities across the internet. These operations, which OpenAI shutdown between 2023 and 2024, originated from Russia, China, Iran and Israel and attempted to manipulate public opinion and influence political outcomes without revealing their true identities or intentions, the company said on Thursday. “As of May 2024, these campaigns do not appear to have meaningfully increased their audience engagement or reach as a result of our services,” OpenAI said in a report about the operation, and added that it worked with people across the tech industry, civil society and governments to cut off these bad actors.

OpenAI’s report comes amidst concerns about the impact of generative AI on multiple elections around the world slated for this year including in the US. In its findings, OpenAI revealed how networks of people engaged in influence operations have used generative AI to generate text and images at much higher volumes than before, and fake engagement by using AI to generate fake comments on social media posts.

“Over the last year and a half there have been a lot of questions around what might happen if influence operations use generative AI,” Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI’s Intelligence and Investigations team, told members of the media in a press briefing, according to Bloomberg. “With this report, we really want to start filling in some of the blanks.”

OpenAI said that the Russian operation called “Doppelganger”, used the company’s models to generate headlines, convert news articles to Facebook posts, and create comments in multiple languages to undermine support for Ukraine. Another Russian group used used OpenAI's models to debug code for a Telegram bot that posted short political comments in English and Russian, targeting Ukraine, Moldova, the US, and Baltic States. The Chinese network "Spamouflage," known for its influence efforts across Facebook and Instagram, utilized OpenAI's models to research social media activity and generate text-based content in multiple languages across various platforms. The Iranian "International Union of Virtual Media" also used AI to generate content in multiple languages.

OpenAI’s disclosure is similar to the ones that other tech companies make from time to time. On Wednesday, for instance, Meta released its latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior detailing how an Israeli marketing firm had used fake Facebook accounts to run an influence campaign on its platform that targeted people in the US and Canada.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-says-it-stopped-multiple-covert-influence-operations-that-abused-its-ai-models-225115466.html?src=rss

OpenAI says it stopped multiple covert influence operations that abused its AI models

Posted on by

OpenAI said that it stopped five covert influence operations that used its AI models for deceptive activities across the internet. These operations, which OpenAI shutdown between 2023 and 2024, originated from Russia, China, Iran and Israel and attempted to manipulate public opinion and influence political outcomes without revealing their true identities or intentions, the company said on Thursday. “As of May 2024, these campaigns do not appear to have meaningfully increased their audience engagement or reach as a result of our services,” OpenAI said in a report about the operation, and added that it worked with people across the tech industry, civil society and governments to cut off these bad actors.

OpenAI’s report comes amidst concerns about the impact of generative AI on multiple elections around the world slated for this year including in the US. In its findings, OpenAI revealed how networks of people engaged in influence operations have used generative AI to generate text and images at much higher volumes than before, and fake engagement by using AI to generate fake comments on social media posts.

“Over the last year and a half there have been a lot of questions around what might happen if influence operations use generative AI,” Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI’s Intelligence and Investigations team, told members of the media in a press briefing, according to Bloomberg. “With this report, we really want to start filling in some of the blanks.”

OpenAI said that the Russian operation called “Doppelganger”, used the company’s models to generate headlines, convert news articles to Facebook posts, and create comments in multiple languages to undermine support for Ukraine. Another Russian group used used OpenAI's models to debug code for a Telegram bot that posted short political comments in English and Russian, targeting Ukraine, Moldova, the US, and Baltic States. The Chinese network "Spamouflage," known for its influence efforts across Facebook and Instagram, utilized OpenAI's models to research social media activity and generate text-based content in multiple languages across various platforms. The Iranian "International Union of Virtual Media" also used AI to generate content in multiple languages.

OpenAI’s disclosure is similar to the ones that other tech companies make from time to time. On Wednesday, for instance, Meta released its latest report on coordinated inauthentic behavior detailing how an Israeli marketing firm had used fake Facebook accounts to run an influence campaign on its platform that targeted people in the US and Canada.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-says-it-stopped-multiple-covert-influence-operations-that-abused-its-ai-models-225115466.html?src=rss

X-Men ‘97 didn’t have to go that hard

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The following article discusses spoilers for the first season of X-Men ‘97.

I was excited about the return of the ‘90s Saturday morning cartoon version of the X-Men. Still, I wasn’t sure Marvel, under the auspices of Disney, could deliver on the flavor of the original while also making a modern show that older fans, now adults in their 30s and 40s, could enjoy. And X-Men '97 is a total play on our nostalgia, which makes it even odder that it delivers. And is better than the original in pretty much every way.

And of all the Marvel baubles that needed some affection, the X-Men arguably needed it most. The ten-episode run managed to cram in so many plotlines, cameos, comic sagas, villains, plot twists and even deaths that, at times, it was hard to process everything — but I utterly loved how relentless it all was. X-Men ‘97 goes hard, especially if you’re already an obsessive fan.

When Marvel first launched an all-you-can-read comic book app, I went in hard on the X-Men back catalog, especially stories by Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison, two of my favorite writers. X-Men ’97 mines a lot of my favorite characters and stories. Magneto is put on trial, and begins a (brief?) redemption arc, Jean Grey turns out to be a clone, and the cartoon crammed a roughly-year-long comic arc, Inferno, into a single episode. Other arcs either included wholesale, or with some riffs, include Lifedeath, Fatal Attractions, Motendo, Operation: Zero Tolerance and more.

The highlight of this first season (a second is already underway) has to be the crushing episode 5, where the mutant nation of Genosha is devastated by a high-powered sentinel mothership… thing. Just before the attack destroys mutant adults, mutant children and eventually even an X-man, Cable, the time-traveling son of Scott Summers and Jean’s clone. (See: Inferno, mentioned above) reappears to stop the attack. But he fails again and his mother dies.

Magneto is left helpless as mutants are slaughtered and he’s forced to relive the genocide he suffered as a child. Eventually, Gambit sacrifices himself and lights up the entire robot with his mutant ability. This is after Rogue reignites a romance with Magento, changes her mind, and decides to be with Gambit. As I said, each episode is a lot.

I may be alone in this, but I still prefer the older series’ animation style and look. A cartoon can look a little scrappy, in my opinion —or maybe I’m just 39 and also not a Disney executive. The majority of the action scenes are great, too. Cyclops is finally not done dirty and gets to thrive in fights. There are some great combination attacks comparable to the iconic fastball special.

Sometimes, the show can feel a bit too “anime” (And I love anime, don’t at me!), where the ridiculous scale of the fight removed a lot of my interest in it. Cool, Bastian has metal wings in the final episode. Yes, yes, very cool. But didn’t one of his super sentinel underlings wipe the floor with the X-Men mid-series? And did we need the Phoenix to reappear (again!) so that Jean can save her 50-something son from the future? Probably not.

But, it’s the X-Men. It wouldn’t be the X-Men without this kind of nonsense.

X-Men 97

I also adored the attention to detail. How Storm changed back to her original comic-book attire, Rogue transitioned to her green and white look, Magneto wore the same black-and-white costume while on trial, just like the original comic book. X-Men '97 doesn’t miss the chance to sprinkle in other Marvel characters, too. Captain America pops up a few times, we spot an out-of-costume Spider-Man, with Mary Jane Watson, watching the fall of Asteroid M. The Silver Samurai, who got his own episode in the original series, stares on as Tokyo loses power due to Magneto’s attack on the whole of Earth.

In other episodes, an aged Polaris, Rachel Grey and more mutants briefly appear in a vision of the future. The series is bursting at the seams with references, easter eggs and surprises. Did you know that Bastian is briefly, obliquely, on-screen during the horrific attack on Genosha, long before he’s revealed as the X-Men’s primary antagonist? Well, he is. It’s a show that’s ripe for debate and discussion in an era of Reddit, Discord and YouTube reactions.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige stipulated that both the cast and the music had to return for the project to happen. I’m glad it did and I’m glad the theme song still slaps.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-men-97-didnt-have-to-go-that-hard-140023964.html?src=rss

X-Men ‘97 didn’t have to go that hard

Posted on by

The following article discusses spoilers for the first season of X-Men ‘97.

I was excited about the return of the ‘90s Saturday morning cartoon version of the X-Men. Still, I wasn’t sure Marvel, under the auspices of Disney, could deliver on the flavor of the original while also making a modern show that older fans, now adults in their 30s and 40s, could enjoy. And X-Men '97 is a total play on our nostalgia, which makes it even odder that it delivers. And is better than the original in pretty much every way.

And of all the Marvel baubles that needed some affection, the X-Men arguably needed it most. The ten-episode run managed to cram in so many plotlines, cameos, comic sagas, villains, plot twists and even deaths that, at times, it was hard to process everything — but I utterly loved how relentless it all was. X-Men ‘97 goes hard, especially if you’re already an obsessive fan.

When Marvel first launched an all-you-can-read comic book app, I went in hard on the X-Men back catalog, especially stories by Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison, two of my favorite writers. X-Men ’97 mines a lot of my favorite characters and stories. Magneto is put on trial, and begins a (brief?) redemption arc, Jean Grey turns out to be a clone, and the cartoon crammed a roughly-year-long comic arc, Inferno, into a single episode. Other arcs either included wholesale, or with some riffs, include Lifedeath, Fatal Attractions, Motendo, Operation: Zero Tolerance and more.

The highlight of this first season (a second is already underway) has to be the crushing episode 5, where the mutant nation of Genosha is devastated by a high-powered sentinel mothership… thing. Just before the attack destroys mutant adults, mutant children and eventually even an X-man, Cable, the time-traveling son of Scott Summers and Jean’s clone. (See: Inferno, mentioned above) reappears to stop the attack. But he fails again and his mother dies.

Magneto is left helpless as mutants are slaughtered and he’s forced to relive the genocide he suffered as a child. Eventually, Gambit sacrifices himself and lights up the entire robot with his mutant ability. This is after Rogue reignites a romance with Magento, changes her mind, and decides to be with Gambit. As I said, each episode is a lot.

I may be alone in this, but I still prefer the older series’ animation style and look. A cartoon can look a little scrappy, in my opinion —or maybe I’m just 39 and also not a Disney executive. The majority of the action scenes are great, too. Cyclops is finally not done dirty and gets to thrive in fights. There are some great combination attacks comparable to the iconic fastball special.

Sometimes, the show can feel a bit too “anime” (And I love anime, don’t at me!), where the ridiculous scale of the fight removed a lot of my interest in it. Cool, Bastian has metal wings in the final episode. Yes, yes, very cool. But didn’t one of his super sentinel underlings wipe the floor with the X-Men mid-series? And did we need the Phoenix to reappear (again!) so that Jean can save her 50-something son from the future? Probably not.

But, it’s the X-Men. It wouldn’t be the X-Men without this kind of nonsense.

X-Men 97

I also adored the attention to detail. How Storm changed back to her original comic-book attire, Rogue transitioned to her green and white look, Magneto wore the same black-and-white costume while on trial, just like the original comic book. X-Men '97 doesn’t miss the chance to sprinkle in other Marvel characters, too. Captain America pops up a few times, we spot an out-of-costume Spider-Man, with Mary Jane Watson, watching the fall of Asteroid M. The Silver Samurai, who got his own episode in the original series, stares on as Tokyo loses power due to Magneto’s attack on the whole of Earth.

In other episodes, an aged Polaris, Rachel Grey and more mutants briefly appear in a vision of the future. The series is bursting at the seams with references, easter eggs and surprises. Did you know that Bastian is briefly, obliquely, on-screen during the horrific attack on Genosha, long before he’s revealed as the X-Men’s primary antagonist? Well, he is. It’s a show that’s ripe for debate and discussion in an era of Reddit, Discord and YouTube reactions.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige stipulated that both the cast and the music had to return for the project to happen. I’m glad it did and I’m glad the theme song still slaps.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-men-97-didnt-have-to-go-that-hard-140023964.html?src=rss

LinkedIn now has Wordle-style games you can play every day

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LinkedIn, the professional network known for job listings and unsolicited career advice, is jumping into gaming. The platform is officially introducing a set of Wordle-style puzzle games, weeks after they were first spotted in the app.

The company is starting with three games: Pinpoint, a word game where players must guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that’s a bit like a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game that involves guessing a series of four-letter words and placing them in the correct order.

LinkedIn describes them as “thinking-oriented games,” though the format will likely look familiar to fans of The New York Times Games app. Each game can only be played once a day, and players can share their score with friends in cute emoji-filled messages reminiscent of the “Wordle grid.” The service will also keep track of “streaks,” to encourage players to come back every day. Given the similarities, it shouldn’t be surprising that games were developed by LinkedIn’s news team, which recently hired a dedicated games editor.

Games have been a boon for The New York Times since it acquired Wordle in 2022, and other publications have tried to emulate that success with their own lineup of word and puzzle games. I asked LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief and VP of Product Dan Roth if the company was inspired by the success of Wordle and the NYT’s Games app. He said that the inspiration was actually much older: “the very first crossword puzzle” in the New York World newspaper more than 100 years ago. He added that there aren’t currently plans for a standalone gaming app.

“These games aren't designed to be just played,” Roth told Engadget. “We're not getting into the gaming world to get into the gaming world. The idea is games that can help you think differently and connect with your network.”

You can try out the new games on LinkedIn.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedin-now-has-wordle-style-games-you-can-play-every-day-133035046.html?src=rss

YouTube created the creator economy

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Nineteen years after Jawed Karim uploaded the very first YouTube video, the awkward, 19-second clip in front of San Diego Zoo’s elephant enclosure is memorable today only because of what it represents: the start of a multibillion-dollar juggernaut that defines so much of what it means to be an online creator.

Today, YouTube is the most dominant social media platform by a sizable margin, especially among teenagers. Its influence is so vast it feels almost impossible to define. The service has birthed thousands of memes and internet personalities. Its recommendation algorithm has been credited with supercharging bizarre trends and viral misinformation.

But one of the most powerful ways YouTube has wielded its influence is through its Partner Program. The revenue sharing arrangement has generated billions of dollars for its most popular users and helped define the multibillion-dollar industry we now call the creator economy. Today, there are dozens of platforms and business models for making money via content creation, but it’s difficult to imagine any of them existing without YouTube’s Partner Program.

While YouTube is hardly the only platform that has made becoming an online creator feel like a viable career path, it has played an outsized role in creating and fueling the industry. When Google first introduced the Partner Program in 2007, there weren’t many ways to make a living from online content. The blogging industry was well established, but online media dynamics were already shifting away from independently run operations in favor of established platforms and brands.

YouTube, on the other hand, was a rising upstart in online media. Google had acquired the video service in 2006, before it had ads or even a mobile app. And when it announced it would make some of its most popular creators “partners“ in its business, it promised some of Google’s ad money could flow directly to the people making content.

It would take several more years for the Partner Program to grow into the money-printing machine it is now. But the Partner Program arrived, in 2007, when there was a growing demand for online video. Between 2006 and 2009, the audience for online video doubled, according to Pew Research, and YouTube was the biggest beneficiary. By the fall of 2009, YouTube was seeing more than one billion views a day.

That same year, YouTube made another important change to its monetization policies. It decided to spread the wealth so any single viral video could be eligible for revenue sharing, even if the creator wasn’t a partner, affirming that YouTube was the place to make money from viral content. In 2012, the Partner Program officially opened to everyone, and by 2014 there were one million creators making money from YouTube, according to The New York Times.

The flood of creators looking for a payout (and the sometimes scammy tactics that drove them) eventually led YouTube to again tighten its requirement for partner status in 2017. But YouTube had already cemented itself as the platform for amateur creators to turn their videos into a steady income. Today, there are more than three million channels with partner status, and the company has paid creators more than $70 billion in the last three years alone.

Of course, creators starting out now have many options available besides YouTube. Nearly every social media app offers some kind of monetization opportunity, though few have generated anything close to the eye-popping eight-figure sums made by YouTube’s top talent.

Other companies' creator funds, in which all creators draw payouts from the same pool of money fronted by the platform, have been underwhelming. YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, regularly tops the lists of YouTube’s highest earners. In 2022, he shared that he was making less than $10,000 a year from TikTok’s creator fund. And other apps’ monetization features, like tipping, subscriptions and virtual gifts, are difficult to scale.

Unsurprisingly, the number of YouTube-made multimillionaires has drastically changed teens’ ideas for career paths. In 2005, the year YouTube came online, teens said their top career aspirations were to become teachers or doctors, according to a poll conducted by Gallup. By 2021, YouGov found becoming a YouTuber or streamer was the top aspiration for Gen Z. In 2023, Morning Consult reported that 57% of Gen Z would like to pursue a career as an online creator “if given the opportunity.”

Polls like this often prompt a lot of eye rolls and snarky headlines. But it’s never been easier or more lucrative to be an online creator. At least one university offers a major in content creation and social media. Whether we like the idea of influencing as a career path, the industry of independent streamers, vloggers, newsletter writers, podcast producers, VTubers and others is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-created-the-creator-economy-130028016.html?src=rss

LinkedIn is developing in-app games to further distract you from your job hunt

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LinkedIn, a platform that surely everybody associates with fun, may soon offer puzzle-based games to give its users something to do besides networking. App researcher Nima Owji posted a series of screenshots on X this weekend showing some of the games LinkedIn is working on, and the company has since confirmed the plan to TechCrunch. Employees’ scores will reportedly affect how the companies they work for are ranked in the games.

Per TechCrunch, the titles LinkedIn is working on so far include “Queens,” “Inference” and “Crossclimb.” LinkedIn provided the publication with some newer images of the games, but for everyone just anxiously awaiting their rollout, there’s no timeline yet for when they’ll be released. It’s unclear if games will be available in full to free users or reserved for LinkedIn’s paid subscribers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/linkedin-is-developing-in-app-games-to-further-distract-you-from-your-job-hunt-205953683.html?src=rss

SpaceX lawsuit claims repeated instances of gender discrimination and basic safeguarding failures

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Warning: The following article covers matters of a sensitive nature.

A SpaceX employee has filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of siding with a supervisor who pressured her into having sexual relations with him. The plaintiff said that she and other female employees also had to endure "humiliating comments" questioning their credentials, that she was passed up for promotions in favor of male candidates and that she experienced retaliation when she complained about being paid less than her male counterparts. 

The plaintiff, Michelle Dopak, has been working at the aerospace corporation's headquarters in California since 2017. According to her complaint, she experienced discrimination early on in her employment when she was passed up for job opportunities in favor of external male candidates. Her male colleagues allegedly spread rumors about their female coworkers, as well, claiming that they only got their jobs because of their looks. Dopak and two of her female colleagues met with Gwynne Shotwell to complain about both issues — "an action that no male colleague or employee at SpaceX would ever feel the need to do to justify their hiring and stop such discriminatory actions," the lawsuit reads. The SpaceX president, however, apparently didn't take any action. 

After a reorganization in 2019, the plaintiff was placed under the supervision of a male boss who allegedly pressured her into having a sexual relationship that lasted years. When she got pregnant as a result, she said her married supervisor offered her $100,000 to have an abortion, which she had refused. She also accused SpaceX of colluding with her boss to transfer 48,289 shares worth $3,718,253 out of his name so that he could get out of paying child support. 

Her complaints didn't end there. After getting promoted to a position she had been chasing for years, she found out that a male colleague who was hired at the same time was being paid $5,000 more. The company officials she talked to about the pay disparity couldn't justify it and allegedly offered her only $2,500 more if she also took a reduction in stock benefits. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff said the offer was "a message that if you complain at SpaceX, we will just retaliate against you and find other ways to punish you."

The lawsuit accuses SpaceX of forcing female employees who have claims of sexual harassment and discrimination into bringing their claims to arbitration so that they could be kept secret from the public. "SpaceX has also attempted to coerce and force [the plaintiff] into only bringing her claims in arbitration even though such claims are barred from being forced to arbitration," the complaint continues.

The plaintiff is asking for general, compensatory and consequential damages, including lost wages, earnings and other employee benefits. She's also asking the court to prohibit SpaceX from continuing any "unfair and unlawful business practices." SpaceX is currently facing another proposed class action lawsuit that claims it pays women and minorities tens of thousands less than what it pays white male employees. In January, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against SpaceX, as well, accusing it for illegally firing a group of engineers who criticized Elon Musk for making crude jokes on X about the sexual misconduct accusations against him.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spacex-lawsuit-claims-repeated-instances-of-gender-discrimination-and-basic-safeguarding-failures-133014753.html?src=rss