KPMG has settled allegations that they discriminated against Asian job applicants in their Short Hills, New Jersey office location. They settled these allegations with the U.S. department of labor. More specifically they had to settle with the Federal Contract Compliance office of the US Department of labor.
They settled the allegations by paying a fine of $420,000 to the Department of Labor. As part of the settlement, KPMG did not admit any wrongdoing. KPMG allegedly discriminated against 60 job applicants.
Another way of looking at this is that KPMG could have drug this out over a number of years and hoped it went away. However, if some of this information leaked to the press during that investigation, it could have been a lot worse.
Now the reason that KPMG was investigated by the Federal Contract Compliance office is because they have over $14 million of contracts with several federal agencies. In order to contract with the federal government you have to meet certain equal opportunity requirements. Some of the agencies they have contracts are well known agencies like the IRS, NASA, Department of Energy and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Together, the department and KPMG will ensure that this issue is resolved, and that the company has the measures in place to comply with federal hiring and employment law,” OFCCP Acting Director Thomas Dowd said in a release about the settlement.
The settlement will help pay some of the applicants. Additionally, KPMG will have to offer job opportunities to some of the applicants.
As spokesperson for KPMG made the following statement, “KPMG has long been recognized as a great place to work and build a career, including being named the 2017 Best Employer for Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) by the Asia Society.”
A word on discrimination at the big 4
I have worked in the big 4 for almost a decade now, and have seen this discrimination first hand. The big 4 always pat themselves on the back about diversity and you can see this in the tone deaf statement that the KPMG spokesperson made.
What I want to warn everyone about out there is discrimination in the workplace. It still exists. You have to remember how the big 4 operate. They don’t operate as a cohesive unit. Each group within each firm is run differently and doesn’t necessarily implement national strategies.
Each city office is run differently. Because of this, you can have a national firm that says they are diverse when in practice each individual office discriminates. I think the big public accounting firms preach diversity, but I don’t see it in practice.
They don’t teach their people how to implement awareness of diverse people. People aren’t perceptive to thoughts that don’t sound like their own coming from people that look like themselves. I hope that KPMG and the other big 4 accounting firms can use this settlement to understand the steps they need to take to make sure diversity measures are pushed down to local offices. You don’t push down diversity awareness through a webinar or an elearning. You have to have your leaders in local offices preaching values on a frequent basis.
You also have to have partners in local offices listening to diverse thoughts and diverse people that don’t look like themselves. Otherwise these big accounting firms become echo chambers.
In conclusion, KPMG has completed the governmental part of this investigation. There will no doubt be civil litigation that comes out of this. Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get updates.
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