Newly released court documents give a rare glimpse of the compensation practices at Nike and offer new details into how Nike plans to defend itself against a sweeping gender-discrimination lawsuit.
The documents, including hundreds of pages of deposition transcripts, were filed last week in a lawsuit that alleges widespread gender discrimination.
The case is proceeding under a protective order, meaning many documents remain sealed. The latest flurry of documents enlarges what's known about Nike's hiring practices and what it's done to address complaints about pay disparities but leaves key questions unanswered, including what plaintiffs allege to be the pay disparity between male and female employees.
"This case seeks to make it finally possible for female employees to be paid fairly and equally and be recognized fully for their contributions to Nike," lawyers for plaintiffs wrote in a partially unsealed motion for class certification filed Wednesday.
The motion seeks the certification of a class of roughly 5,000 women who worked at Nike's headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, since October 2017. The class excludes some departments.
Since the lawsuit was filed in 2018, Nike has repeatedly said it has zero tolerance for discrimination.
Nike's response to the motion for class certification is under seal, but other documents made public last week suggested the company would argue that individual hiring managers made decisions about pay, therefore any problems were isolated, not systemic.
"We're setting pay ranges and the structures," a Nike human-resources executive said in a snippet of deposition testimony made public last week. "Managers are responsible for making pay decisions for their employees."
Plaintiffs are ready to make the opposite argument, but critical pieces of their argument remain sealed, including parts of a study done by the plaintiffs' expert witness David Neumark, a labor economist who said Nike had paid women less than men "even though women had the same or better performance ratings, education background, and work experience."
The amount of the disparity alleged remains redacted, part of Nike's request to keep numerous records under seal. Nike previously said plaintiffs' pay-shortfall conclusions were "fundamentally flawed." On Friday, Nike also filed a motion that sought to have Neumark's testimony tossed out. The motion is under seal.
Nike last week also asked the court to exclude the testimony of the second expert witness for plaintiffs, the industrial and organizational psychologist Kathleen Lundquist. Broadly, Nike said Lundquist's work was "unreliable, irrelevant and inadmissible" for several reasons, including that it's not based on a "reliable — or even discernable — methodology."
The more than 700 pages of documents filed in support of the motion give a rare look at Nike's compensation practices, including the hierarchy Nike uses to rank employees — based on the word "VALUES" — and the numerous bonus plans that exist for employees.
The records also contain snippets of deposition testimony from three former Nike employees who said Nike didn't negotiate their salaries when they were hired and a lengthy exchange about what Nike looked for in new employees, including a passion for sports and the ability to communicate.
While the deposition testimony entered in the court record isn't complete, the snippets Nike offered include several exchanges that show the company has taken steps to address wage disparities, including no longer asking workers about pay at prior jobs and reducing the number of noncompetitive promotions inside the company.
The lawsuit dates to 2018. It was filed on behalf of four former Nike employees who alleged they were subject to gender discrimination and sexual harassment while at Nike. The lawsuit followed reporting on a "boys' club" culture at Nike in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
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