The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened a formal investigation into the hiring and employment practices of Uber.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the probe has been going on since August 2017. It seeks to reveal whether there is a pay disparity between male and female employees, among other labor concerns.

Uber did not immediately respond to Ars’ question as to how many federal inquiries the company currently faces, but the company told multiple media outlets in a statement that Uber has "made a lot of changes in the last 18 months" and that it had added new "diversity and leadership training" worldwide.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over the company’s top post in August 2017, has tried to rehabilitate the company’s image in the wake of its actions under co-founder Travis Kalanick, who left it in tatters.

Khosrowshahi is expected to take the company public in 2019 despite what the WSJ reported as "at least five other federal investigations by multiple agencies into its pricing practices, accusations of bribery by Uber executives abroad, and its use of software designed to evade local officials tracking its operations, among other matters."

Kimberly Smith-Brown, a spokeswoman for the EEOC, said that due to "strict confidentiality provisions," the agency could not confirm or deny "the existence of specific charges."



"We’re also not allowed to provide information on investigations and administrative resolutions," she emailed Ars. "Information becomes public only when the EEOC files a lawsuit, which is typically a last resort."

In 2016, the EEOC issued a lengthy report entitled "Diversity in High Tech," in which it found that, "compared to overall private industry," the high-tech sector employed a smaller share of women: 48 percent to 36 percent.