It has been reported that one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world may face a problem with respect to dealing with its employees. The report has been published by Nathaniel Popper who is a journalist at the New York Times.
The journalist managed to gather the salary data from Coinbase from 2018 and published it for better visibility of the situation. The data shared by Popper shows that Coinbase was paying its Black employees less than the rest.
The percentage difference between the salaries paid out to the Black employees and the rest was 7%. In the report, the journalist compared the salary figures of employees that were working on the same designations.
The data also shows that the average salary difference between the Black employees and the rest at Coinbase was around $11,500. Even the compensation figures for Coinbase’s stock options among the Black and White employees showed a gap of around 11%.
In the report shared by Popper, he also alleged Coinbase of practicing gender discrimination when paying salaries. While pointing out the salary differences, the journalist quoted the salary difference between the male level-one managers and the female level-one managers.
The figures shared by Popper show that the male level-one managers were getting 20% more salary than the female level-one managers.
In the end, the journalist stated that on average, all the female employees at Coinbase received 8% fewer wages than the male employees in the year 2018.
The pay disparity at the Coinbase firm seems to be way more than the pay disparity that has been observed in the tech industry.
However, L. J. Brock wasted no time and took charge of responding to journalist’s accusations. L. J. Brock is known is currently appointed as the Chief People Officer at Coinbase. While responding to the allegations made by the journalist, Brock posted Coinbase’s internal email.
After posting the email on the blog, Brock stated that Coinbase had made significant efforts into making sure that it followed the pay-for-performance module in 2018. He stated that the firm adopted this philosophy in order to make sure that there was full transparency among all its employees.
He also stated that employees who displayed better performance results were given a 3% increase in compensation at the beginning of the year 2019. He confirmed that the pay targets per employee were also made transparent in 2018 and 2019.
Apart from the salary figures, Brock also confirmed that in the running year, Coinbase has increased its employee pool to 1,000, which used to be 830 back in 2018.
Brock clarified that Coinbase has and will always remain against discriminatory practices and has taken all the necessary steps to ensure it does not become biased to any case under any circumstances.