Disney settles suit over women's pay for $43 million

(Reuters) - Walt Disney has agreed to pay $43.3 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its female employees in California earned $150 million less than their male counterparts over an eight-year period, the plaintiffs' lawyers said in a statement on Monday.

As part of the settlement, Disney has agreed to retain a labor economist for three years to analyze pay equity among full-time, non-union California employees below the vice president level, and address differences, the three law firms representing the plaintiffs said.

The suit was originally filed by LaRonda Rasmussen in 2019, after she learned that six men with the same job title earned substantially more than her, including one man with several years less experience, who was earning $20,000 a year more than she did.

Some 9,000 current and former female employees of the entertainment company eventually joined the suit. Disney attempted to stop the class action, but a judge ruled last December that it could proceed, Andrus Anderson, one of the law firms, said at the time.

"I strongly commend Ms Rasmussen and the women who brought this discrimination suit against Disney, one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. They risked their careers to raise pay disparity at Disney," Lori Andrus, a partner at Andrus Anderson, said in Monday's statement.

"We have always been committed to paying our employees fairly and have demonstrated that commitment throughout this case, and we are pleased to have resolved this matter," a Disney spokesperson told Reuters.

The case was also supported by an analysis of Disney's human resource data from April 2015 until December 2022 that found female Disney employees were paid roughly 2% less than their male counterparts. The analysis was conducted by David Neumark, a University of California Irvine professor and labor economist.

The settlement agreement, which was filed in a California state court, still requires approval by a judge, according to the lawyers.

(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina and Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Kate Mayberry)

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