KPMG Sued for Gender Discrimination

A $350 million class action lawsuit filed against KPMG LLP alleges that the Big Four firm repeatedly fails to promote its female employees and discriminates against them in terms of salary and maternity leave, reported Reuters.

The complaint, filed on June 2 in the Southern District of New York, levels a series of grievances against KPMG, including that, “women are conspicuously absent from KPMG’s leadership;” less than one in five KPMG partners is female, despite the fact that the firm’s workforce is 50 percent female; KPMG’s female managers “are not only under-promoted, but underpaid as well;” and “that KPMG’s purported support for female employees and working mothers was just a sham.”

Plaintiff Donna Kassman, a former KPMG senior manager who brought the complaint of behalf of herself and other similarly situated female employees of the firm, also claims that KMPG’s flextime policy, which enables employees to reduce their hours for similarly reduced pay, is unfair because the majority of KPMG employees who take advantage of that benefit, working mothers, still have to maintain a full workload, said Law360.

According to the complaint, when Kassman gave birth to her first child in 2003, her salary was slashed by $20,000, though she wasn’t given a reason for the reduction. Following her pregnancy, she was repeatedly passed over for promotion and ultimately resigned her position in October 2010, said Law360.