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.
WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust (Score:5, Interesting)
Settlement? What settlement? This is a prima facie Clayton Act Anti-Trust violation. Multiple felonies, with jailtime due. Amazingly, this appearently exists on paper, so everyone who negotiated or signed it should go to jail.
The Clayton Act makes organizing supplier boycotts a prohibited activity. And that's just what they have done -- organized a boycott not to hire an employee, times the collective number.
That this has not gone to a Federal Grand Jury appears more like corruption than anything else.
Re:And yet (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about who is dispensable or not, companies do not exist to hire people, they exist to make products / provide services that allow the owners to make money, that's the purpose of a company. Hiring employees becomes necessary when there is more work that can be done, where the cost of hired labour is lower than the value produced by that labour. If you make labour cost too high, less of it will be bought, because the value produced by that labour may not be enough to cover the cost and to make some profit, and the whole point of business is to generate profit, otherwise it's not a business but a hobby. Hobbies have their place in life too, nothing wrong with hobbies, but hobbies can lose money, while businesses can only survive if they make money. Making money is the point and labour is just like any other tool or machinery, that's exactly what happens. Labour cost competes with capital cost, make labour cost too high and capital may win, which means automating or outsourcing the labour (capital wins in this case in terms of setting up the infrastructure necessary to outsource labour).
If everybody ran their own company and nobody wanted to work for anybody else, then you'd have the exact situation where everybody was an owner and there would be no employees, but in some situation the cost of labour would be too high, and so the price offered for labour would go up. Then some people who are making less money running their own businesses than what could be offered to them to work for other employees could shut down their businesses and go work for someone else.
The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other, 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.
and now we just use H-1B they don't complain (Score:4, Interesting)
and now we just use H-1B they don't complain about there pay or hours they don't even want to rock the boat as if they get fired they have to get out of the usa right way.
It's time for an union in IT RIGHT NOW.
Re:And yet (Score:1, Interesting)
I am not against unions that do not derive their power from government, so if you want to start your own union, you should be able to, however as an employer, I should not be compelled to work with a union, so I should be able to fire all people in the union, it's my discretion. Agreement between two companies not to hire employees from each other is suboptimal, but nowhere near the scale of damage that government causes with rules and regulations and taxation and inflation. As I said, the problem here is not that Apple and Google decided to agree not to hire from each other, the problem is that there are so few companies in the first place that such agreements can even be noticed.
How small and pathetic is the true state of USA economy when such irrelevant to the larger picture agreements become items of discussion? I will tell you how sad, small and pathetic the true state of USA economy is.
34% of American households feel they are worse off now than in 2008. [wsj.com] So more than a third of American households feel that during today's so called "recovery" they are worse off than during the year 2008, the year when the economic crisis hit USA.
Again, the problem is so few employers are out there and unamerican unconstitutional decisions like this one by this court will not help at all, not even a little, it only makes it worse.
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Anyway, enjoy my last comment here, I had to use my backup account to leave this one. The moderators are already in full swing right now all over my comments, as they often are, making sure that I cannot participate in this discussion. Once they push the 'karma' low enough, I'll not be able to continue leave comments for a while, which is the point I take it, to ensure that the echo-chamber is unchallenged.
Not quite accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And yet (Score:2, Interesting)
It is also interesting to point out that there is an 'Unemployment Rate' statistic that is computed, but I don't think there is a corresponding 'Empty Job' statistic that is tracked in a similar fashion. In a perfect world, would the only thing preventing X workers from filling the X job openings in society be the negotiated rate of pay? (After all, everybody has their price.)
Re:And yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the premises of this thread (the costs and salaries of work immigration need to be controlled by the state), here a half-serious suggestion:
Have work immigrants be employed by your federal govermnent, not by the company they work for. The immigrant reports their working hours and conditions to the government, and they get their salary paid out from there. The government dispatches the worker to the company, and get the salary and other costs paid back from them.
The great benefit is that the worker is no longer there at the mercy of the company, and has no incentive to accept bad conditions or missing pay checks from them. And in any labour dispute they have the backing of a major legal and administrative organization. The government gets a clear view of exactly who the work immigrants are and what they do for their employers. The companies are relieved of some of the responsibility for these workers. Everybody has a common, single point of focus where they can turn in case of problems.
"hobby" has made a million dollars. Mission statem (Score:5, Interesting)
Well you can make up your own definitions of words if you want to, I guess.
My "hobby", as you call it, has brought in over a million dollars. That million has been used according to the company's mission statement.
You know, people actually write down the purpose of the company when they create it. It's called a "mission statement". You might read some sometime. I've yet to see one that says "make money". I have seen a few companies where the people apparently FORGOT their mission, forgot the reason the company was started, and started focusing on money instead. That's why you put the mission statement in prominent places - posted on the wall, on banners, etc - to remind people of why you're there lest they forget.
Re:And yet (Score:5, Interesting)
As a society, we make value judgments all the time about what sort of behaviors should be allowed or prohibited when engaging in commerce. Most of them are based on nothing more than a simple application of the golden rule, or other basic tenants of morality that most societies can agree upon: Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't cheat. Etc, etc.
I wish you luck in trying to argue that, from a moral perspective, two corporations should have the right to secretly negotiate in order to suppress their employee salaries and maximize their profits. Don't lie. Don't cheat. Seems pretty straightforward to me.