It's been 13 years since the lawsuit was filed
It took a long while, but four Goldman Sachs female employees are finally getting their court date with their employer nearly 13 years after a lawsuit was filed on their behalf.
The trial date has been set for June 5, 2023, after a court rejected Goldman’s “serial attacks on class membership,” according to law firms Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and Outten & Golden LLP, who represent a large group of current and former Goldman executives comprising a discrimination class action.
“In the dozen years since the case was filed, Goldman Sachs has launched repeated attacks on class membership, including: five failed attempts to undo the class entirely; adding a hidden arbitration clause in an attempt to remove nearly 700 class members employed by Goldman between 2016-18 (nearly one-half of whom subsequently expressly requested not to be removed); and imposing waivers in severance agreements on over 750 class members who left the firm and were removed from the class by Goldman non-disclosure agreements,” they said.
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The trial will be held in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The court will also set deadlines for pre-trial filings concerning evidence and witnesses.
Meanwhile, a newly-unredacted document alleging an “uncorrected culture of sexual assault and harassment” at the investment bank claims that at least 75 incidents of alleged sexual assault and harassment were reported between 2000 and 2011, reported CNN.
The document is part of the ongoing gender discrimination lawsuit against the investment bank that dates back to 2010, when the original lawusuit was filed on behalf of former Goldman Sachs employees Cristina Chen-Oster, Allison Gamba, Shanna Orlich and Mary de Luis.
The original filing became a class-action lawsuit in 2018. It now represents more than 1,400 current and former female associates and vice-presidents who say they encountered discrimination over pay, promotion, and reviews, according to a press release.
“I hope this case will help to finally break the glass ceiling for women on Wall Street and set a precedent for other industries where gender discrimination is pervasive,” said Chen-Oster. “We need to bring transparency to practices that previously seemed untouchable. Looking forward to sharing our experiences at trial.”
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Previously, two women who worked at global software giant SAP have claimed that they were raped by their colleagues while attending after-work events on business trips, and that the HR department mishandled the situation, Bloomberg reported in August.
Even in a hybrid world, sexual harassment still happens. More than one-third (38%) of employees have experienced harassment through email, video conferencing, chat apps, or by phone, according to The 2021 State of Workplace Harassment.