If true, that is quite obviously legally actionable.
The big issues here (at least for me) are that a) there was a non-zero expectation for someone on paternity leave and b) someone was given a performance evaluation either while on or regarding work done during a paternity leave.
I'm curious if this signals a larger issue at Google where they have paternity leave 'in name only' - similar to 'unlimited' vacation policies and the like.
That is not the case, the gender pay gap does not compare salaries for equal job positions and qualifications.
Anecdotes are also really misleading here: not everybody earns the same amount of money, so you can always find two people where one of the two earns more than the other. It doesn't mean anything. And as a male engineer I have also discovered before that somebody who seemed less qualified earned more than me. Renegotiate, or switch companies.
As for the Google spreadsheet, it is interesting, but I doubt it captures sufficient detail.
In fact, a often used trick with the gender pay gap (among other things) is to remove just enough detail to make it seem outrageous.
For example lets say pediatricians earn less on average than neurosurgeons, but more women become pediatricians then neurosurgeons (why is another matter). Now if you want to give the impression of sexist salaries, you don't publish the average income of male and female pediatricians and male and female neurosurgeons. You go one step back and publish the average salaries of male and female physicians. Just omit the details that could explain the differences in salaries, and you have shown your desired sexist wage gap.
(why pediatricians earn less than neurosurgeons: simple supply and demand).
If the employee would otherwise exceed expectations and took paternity leave, then they still exceed expectations. If they were hired in March and worked for 40 weeks, they would not be penalized for failing to work in January or February. Leave should be handled the same way.
If the employee was not professional about taking leave (didn't give any notice, did not work with colleagues to organize coverage of his tasks, etc.) then things are different. Similarly, if they promised to do something while on leave and didn't, then that would be an issue.
Being rated as someone who meets expectations is not a punishment.
Certainly, one has the right to exercise one's rights, but one also has a duty to acknowledge that they impact others. Someone who takes paternity leave will, mutatis mutandis, achieve less than someone who does not; someone who is on leave for an entire review period and does nothing related to work cannot fairly be said to exceed expectations.
Is that true? I seem to recall a scene from Office Space and flair about this...
Seems like they shouldn't include leave in the review at all and only review when they're working.
On a scale of 1, 2, and 3, where each of these confers different privileges, when I knock you down from a 3 to a 2 specifically because of X, I am punishing you for X.
The corporate words tied to the ratings are not magical.
It depends on what the rating is used for.
As long as the performance review was done based on the employee's performance over the entire year, it's fair game no?
I'm not sure I agree with the logic that someone who takes time off during the year is given credit for the good work they would have done had they not taken time off.
Reviews should be about the quality of the work, not whether you take 0 vacations days or work until 10pm everyday because you're 22 and don't have a family.
So in my opinion it's not fair game.
Of course, if paternity leave really means "we expect you to work at a similar rate", then it's quite obviously not a "paternity leave" in anything other than name.