Judge Rejects $324.5 Million Settlement For Tech Workers, Argues For More 268
An anonymous reader writes with this news from Reuters: A U.S. district judge on Friday ruled that the $324.5 million settlement negotiated by Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe with the tech workers who brought an antitrust lawsuit against them was too low. The judge cited the settlement amount of a similar lawsuit brought against Disney and Intuit last year which resulted in plaintiffs obtaining proportionally more for lost wages. And yet, according to the judge, the current plaintiffs have "much more leverage". She cited evidence clearly showing Apple's Steve Jobs strong-arming the other companies in the suit into agreeing to a no-employee-poaching agreement, and in one instance, of Google failing to rope in Facebook into a similar agreement which resulted in a 10% increase of all Google employee salaries. In other words, clear evidence that the no-poaching agreement effectively suppressed the salaries of these companies' tech workers. Another hearing is scheduled for September 10.
And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
how could these companies say with a straight face that they only want more H1B visa employees due to lack worker shortage and not because they're trying to find cheaper labor?
Re:And yet (Score:2, Insightful)
Hang them by balls .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn right it's too low! .. just go through top admin, and ALL boards of Directors, and take a vote for each manager, and nail there testicles or pussylips to boards and hall them up in the air .. .. they will pay attention if you spray when their eye's move away..
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Those bastards need to spend time behind f.ing bars, when you consider the pain ans suffering, moving, family brake-ups and suicides this kind of shit ends up doing to people, mostly men.
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F.ing Tech companies of this size
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and let those that suffered, or anyone in the tech industry a bottle of salt water they can use to clean these people's wounds as they hang.. and tell them how it made you feel, to live with too little money
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Thank them one for me!
Re:And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
How horrible! Workers should be completely disposable, just like any common tool or machinery. Only the owners are truly indispensable.
Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain (Score:2, Insightful)
Doctors and Lawyers have large lobbying bodies (AMA and ABA, respectively) that represent their interests. Does a comparably large organization exist for Programmers?
Re:And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution to H1B visa employees is to simply have combination of a wage requirement plus an annual tariff on H1B visa employees such that the total cost of the H1B visa employee is higher than the median employee costs.
If the companies still want H1B visa employees then there is a genuine shortage, and they'll pay what it takes to get employees.
If suddenly they don't want piles H1B visas and start hiring locally, well.. that tells us there wasn't really a shortage.
Given H1B employees tend to get paid less though, I expect that's the main reason they are desirable.
Re:And yet (Score:2, Insightful)
> If you make labour cost too high, less of it will be bought
This is meaningless and really the reason I'm modding you down. You have tried to equate rising wages to labor cost to anti-business. The rest of the post is either statement of facts (redundant as it does not lend to an argument) or statements of opinion about orthogonal concerns (offtopic). Specifically, your only point, that I can see, was to characterize a business running at a loss as a hobby and then what that means to you. Let's nevermind the horrendous losses Amazon suffered around the millenium, it was only a hobby.
Re:And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And yet (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the reason you were modded as flamebait is that you appear to be rather sympathetic to two multi-billion dollar corporations that were illegally conspiring to suppress the true market value of the wages of their highly skilled employees. You also touched a particularly sensitive nerve by justifying the use of outsourcing, something bound to be pretty unpopular on this site, so it's not too surprising. I do agree with some of the points you made. But it's the last paragraph that's the killer.
The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other...
It doesn't matter what excuse you provide after that. That's the topic at hand, and that's what their punishment is all about. I agree that there are too many government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs. But you can't use that to justify what these companies did. It was wrong, plain and simple, as well as being illegal. These are not companies that are desperately trying to stay profitable - one could understand if not condone the actions if they were unable to turn a profit due to skyrocketing labor costs. This is just trying to maximize profits at the expense of their workers - nothing more than that.
Despite my personal disagreement with your position, your point was stated clearly, without inflammatory language or personal attacks. Unfortunately, -1 Flamebait all too often means "I vehemently disagree with you and wish to show my displeasure / suppress your viewpoint". It's petty and narrow-minded to mod someone down just because you disagree with someone. Goodness knows we can't actually have people disagreeing about something more substantial than one's personal choice of code editor.
Re:And yet (Score:2, Insightful)
If there was actually a shortage, all of those companies would insist on being free to poach where they could to make sure their own needs are met. If they can afford to ignore a large pool of potential employees, they aren't suffering from a shortage.
Re:as one of the effected people (Score:4, Insightful)
This sort of agreement (especially given the legal risk involved) just wouldn't make much sense if you thought that the employees in question were already overpriced.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Devolving talent and skills requires time. There is always new people coming in but they do not come in immediately to the higher level positions. They start lower and possibly work their way up. If your top performers are leaving soon after they reach that "top performer" level, you will have less top performers. So, you recognize their benefit to your company and provide better benefits to try to keep keep them happy or you illegally collude with your competition and peers to not offer benefits greater then you or flat out refuse to hire them away from each other at any cost. These companies chose the later method.
many companies exist to hire people (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's not about who is dispensable or not, companies do not exist to hire people ...
For many years I worked for a corporation that was set up primarily for the purpose of hiring people and taking care of those employees. For the last 12 months, the company has been losing money by continuing to provide health insurance and such for employees who work fewer than 12 hours per month.
You may think that's incredibly unusual, but actually it's not because many, possibly most, corporations are set up for the purpose of hiring a very small number of people, most notably the owners. There have been many times over the last 20 years when I, as the sole shareholder, have needed to choose between making more money or doing more good for the employees and customers. I decided that money is a means to an end. The PURPOSE if making more money would be in order to better take care of the people I care about. I'd like more money because it would allow me to send my daughter to a better school. I'd like more money because it would allow me to give more to my employees and other friends. I'd like more money because it would allow me to give more to organizations such as United Way and the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Choosing between being good to people or making more money, I choose doing good because after all the whole point of more money would be to do good with it. Choosing more money would be putting the means ahead of the ends.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Flaimbait != disagree.
There is no disagree mod for a very good reason.
they exist to make products / provide services that allow the owners to make money,
No, that's not strictly speaking correct. I'm assuming you're referring to limited liability entities (LLEs). LLEs exist for the sole purpose of protecting the owner's personal assetsso that they can operate the company without personal risk.
Many of these are set up to make a profit (as are some non LLEs, like sole traders and partnerships), but by no means all of them are.
the whole point of business is to generate profit,
For profit making entities, then yes, the point is generally to make profit, for the owner. However, these are being granted special legal protections (limitation of liability). Why?
We do that for the greater good. We collectively appear to believe that profit motivates people, so providing a mechanism for companies to operate somewhat freely (i.e. with limited liability) is of net benefit to society. That's because they want to make a profit and they do that by doing useful things. On the whole.
But make no mistake: the point of limited liability companies is not profit, it's for the overall benefit of society. If that link is broken, then there is no reason for them to be given such protections. Of course, the owners are still free to pursue profit as they see fit, but why should they also have the right to do it without personal risk?
In other words, an indicidual might make a company to make a profit, but the reason LLEs exist at all is for the greater good, not for profit.
The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other,
No that was a problem. Google and Apple are given amazing protections by law (limited liability), far more than exist in any naturalistic sense. It is entirely reasonable for them to also be constrained while they make use of these protections. In that way the law is completely reasonable and just and they broke it. What they did is plainly unethical.
it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.
They're not though.b You can set up a little contractor business with just you as an employee pretty easily. You can do it yourself if you feel like or if, like me that stuff turns your brain to mush, you can save hassle and pay someone else to do it. The overall costs are not that high.
The main problem is that businesses have been granted unnatural rights (limitation of liability) but are not keeping to the responsibilities that those rights must require. If anything more regulation is required to keep them in line.
Re:many companies exist to hire people (Score:5, Insightful)
Offtopic maybe, but one of the reasons the USA has lost film production jobs to "socialist" places like Canada and Australia is because those health insurance costs to the company do not exist. Instead there's a slight tax markup which is far less you would expect due to not having to waste a lot of cash funnelling it through insurance fat cats before it gets anywhere near the health services.