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.
In other words... (Score:3)
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.
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?
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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.
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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
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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 kill
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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.
This is why I ha
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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.
How was it "wrong" and why is "illegal" something we care about?
Behold the ordinance of laborers [wikipedia.org] which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)
Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong. As you see here one of the first labor laws of the western world pretty much mandated exactly what these two companies were doing. It can be argued that such laws were necessary at the
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.
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during the black plague in England in the 1300's - hardly relevant now.
And just because something is legal does not make it just.
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Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people
They are between the leaders of these businesses who happen to be people. It would be just as much an act of collusion between people, if none of the businesses were corporations and thus, considered "people" by your viewpoint.
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My use of the coy third person above is because I think the artificial/natural division is arbitrary, especially when discussing phenomena like markets which tend to be a bit of both. What's artificial in an artificial market?
I also think
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.
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.
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I pay lots for a PPO. I have to wait weeks for non-emergency appointments. I live in America.
BCBS, S&W (Score:2)
Sounds like you need a better one. We've been very pleased with Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Texas for insurance and Scott and White for healthcare.
Obviously there are things that need to be improved with the entire systems of a) health insurance and especially b) health care. Given the available options (worldwide), this combination is hard to beat. If you happen to be in Texas and aren't happy with what you're getting, they are worth a look. If you aren't in Texas, and all of the options in your state
"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.
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with you until this part, opposite of fact (Score:2)
> The owners/high-level executives have too much control over the process of wage/bonus distribution. It's like passing around a bag with money (profits), and the owners/executives get to pull as much out as they want first.
You know of course that companies frequently lose money in one quarter or one year, and make money another year. So owners may or may not get ANY money this year. Employees get paid every month, precisely the amount they expect. That's because the money bag goes in the opposite di
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companies ... exist ... to make money.
Companies are "people." Why do people exist? Companies exist so people can pool resources to do what people do. What do people do?
For your statement to be correct, the sole purpose of people existing must be to make a profit. That is suitably flamebait.
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 that's loonitarian bullshit. Lower regulations, and there are more worker deaths, and more profits, but not more jobs (except to replace the dead workers). When the minimum wage goes down, there aren't more jobs, there are fewer. When the minimum
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 mean
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People start companies to institutionalize some set of goals, typically including making money. Society supports this, for example by acknowledging the existence of a company as a legal entity, because of the side effects, such as employment. Other tie-in groups have their own reasons to either support or oppose
Partial truth, mostly not (Score:2)
I felt the need to re-arrange a bit so the most severe issues are first.
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.
Wrong, absolutely wrong. Companies colluding to reduce employee wages is illegal and a problem. Hence the ruling and pending judgement to both reward people shafted by these illegal arrangements and punish the companies for using them.
Have you ever interviewed for either Google or Apple? I have, and their built in exclusion process ensures that they can hire only who they want when they want. If they want to save money they hire nob
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> 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 nevermin
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Re:And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unions are necessary because of the huge imbalance of power between the employer and the employee. The company can replace most of its staff easily and at minimal cost. Most employees can't afford to be out of work for long.
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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
Free assembly is the primary expression of democracy. For you to asset that an employer with 100's of millions of dollars of resources can contrive legal agreements, collude with each other and fire people at their discretion because they exercise those rights is an admission that America is not a democracy but a corpocracy. You're suggesting as soon as ordinary people openly, legally, democratically, get together, combine resources for their mutual benefit it's your opinion that they should be un-employabl
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As to slavery, thievery, murder all of those concepts are government concepts first and foremost and in a free market economy people don't need governments to deal with any of it, private courts and private security is enough to deal with aberrations.
Well how do you force people to abide by the private courts? If you force it by virtue of private security, then you're just a de-facto government and have become what apparently you don't need.
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Game of Thrones
Is a fucking TV series, the reason it's popular is the same reason Shakespeare has lasted so long, it paints a compelling and simplistic picture of human behaviour. Humans are apes, they have a complex hierarchical social structure. Like most of us here you're nowhere near the top of that structure and never will be no matter how much you rant about how the current rules stopping you from owning your own court and dealing out your personal idea of justice via your own personal jackbooted militia. Be honest
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"the reason a government exists is to serve the people, not to earn a profit
- wrong. The reason that governments exist is our inertia, laziness and jealousy. Originally governments were all nobility with the power in hand to kill you."
No, you both are wrong on this count. The reason governments exist is because nation-states with organized governments can out-compete any other form of human organization both economically and militarily. It is conceivable that this is a local minimum in human organizationa
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They could say that with a straight face because the two ideas ("worker shortage" and "cheaper labor") are two sides of the same coin. If there are more workers in a market, the average (or median) salary of an arbitrary engineer goes down. By definition, a shortage exists in any market when the price exceeds what buyers would like to pay. This is essentially why the "natural rate" of unemployment is not zero: There are workers who are not willing to accept the jobs that companies are willing to offer th
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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 pa
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Not really. People consider factors besides salary when choosing jobs -- location, fringe benefits, work content, prestige, and more -- and there are other constraints on worker/job compatibility. A married person might become a homemaker if it takes too much effort to find a job that is sufficiently attractive; moving to a different city is expensive, especially for someone who expects low earnings; an employer cannot have a workforce that consists entirely of people who are learning to be productive in
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People would turn down jobs at Google or Apple on salary grounds if there were a surplus of workers. Almost everyone seems to agree that there is a shortage (according to the usual definition in economics). This case was brought because large companies -- by all accounts -- illegally colluded to counteract that shortage, and thereby suppress their employees' wages.
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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.
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You failed economics, didn't you? If they recruit employees from other companies, they have to make better offers, and they will have to make better counter-offers to their own employees to counteract poaching by other companies. They do not have bottomless pits of money for salary; they calculated that it was better to have a conspiracy against poaching than to try to poach. (There was also Apple's threat of patent lawsuits if Google in particular didn't agree to the deal.)
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Actually, no I didn't but you may have. An actual shortage would mean they couldn't find enough people to maximize their own productivity. They would be leaving money on the table for a lack of employees necessary to do the needed work.
In such a case, they will prefer to pay a bit more for the employees so they can scoop up that money on the table.
At the same time, they would also be more flexible about hiring older engineers, offering scholarships, more telecommute opportunities, etc. If, that is, there wa
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You're applying single-stage reasoning to an iterated game, which is a good way to lose in the iterated game. If company X hires an employee from company Y by making a better offer, how should company Y respond in order to maximize its own revenue? (It will almost always involve a counter-offer to the employee, and if that fails, company Y will probably try to hire away another experienced engineer for reasons that Fred Brooks described in The Mythical Man-Month.)
If you don't think there is a shortage of
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Actually, no. I am well aware of that. It's called supply and demand and it's part of the market. It's funny how free market capitalists suddenly like regulated markets when they might have to pay employees better. What they call a shortage is actually more like the lack of a glut.
If you don't think there is a shortage of software developers in the US, why are developers in the US paid so much more than ones in Europe?
Probably because the U.S. companies insist on being located in the most expensive place in the country. If they were serious about cutting costs, they'd move development to cheaper cities and just maintain a sales office in SV.
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Meanwhile, in the reality-based community, Apple et al. *found* a free-market solution to their woes, and are now in court because government regulations say that their solution is not allowed.
US software developer salaries are much higher than in Europe when you control for cost of living. For example, most of the big cities in Europe have higher costs of living than Silicon Valley, but software developers earn much less there. You have to look pretty far down the list of US cities -- say, Charlotte (NC)
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.
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That it's an undesirable situation is the point. The availability of H1B workers is a construct of US laws and the point of US laws should be to benefit the citizens of the US and the country itself. Hiring foreign workers (and not making them citizens and integrating them into the US) and leaving US workers unemployed and incapable of performing necessary jobs, as well as leaving US-based job functions dependent on foreign citizens, is an undesirable situation for the US and its citizens.
Anything that reme
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Even at wage/cost parity, it still might not cover the benefit of having an employee who is beholden to the company and less likely to report unpaid overtime and/or poor working conditions etc.
Look at the situation in Canada with TFW's. Approximately the same pay, but employees were benefiting from the ability to shaft employees while holding the "we'll pull your work visa if you don't tow the line" card.
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.
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The only problem with your solution is that you are still assuming that the government works for the people. Government works for lobbies, and people are not a lobby.
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Lobbies are people.
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Interesting suggestion. It would solve some problems. Of course, it seems every time we solve a problem we create a problem.
Junglee has a point in his reply. Governments can be just as perverted as corporations, just as can be people.
Business owners won't be happy because they won't be able to pay less-than-minimum wage. To them, this will be the evil govt taking their rights (profits) away from them.
Unless the workers were somehow subsidized. Maybe they can work out some kind of business welfare system lik
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H1Bs from New Jersey get a lot of grief.
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Given a lack of standardized job titles, it's easy enough to fudge. Anyway, H1Bs are so dominant in some areas that their salaries set the prevailing wage.
Not high enough to be significant.
The first part isn'
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They only hire people really, really good at the straight face.
(Or they're actually mentally ill from the cognitive dissonance.)
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.
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How was it a boycott if the engineers in question still had jobs?
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Those who tried to leave probably succeeded. Can you cite to a single case where this anti-poaching agreement prevented an active searcher from getting a job offer?
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Yeah, I figured you had nothing.
Standard Oil and Ma Bell were broken up because they exploited monopoly power. There's nothing remotely similar for tech employers. You claimed there was some kind of supplier boycott, I pointed out that there obviously wasn't one in the usual sense, and you fell back to "maybe this kind of harm happened, you can't prove it didn't!"
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The Clayton Act only applies when someone applies it. If you were wronged by these people, bring suit under the Clayton Act and have at them.
Unfortunately, if you're just a bystander, or the statute of limitations has run out, or you have accepted other settlement in the matter, you can't.
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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.
By that argument, everyone in a union belongs in jail, too.
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By that argument, everyone in a union belongs in jail, too.
Strikes are not boycotts. You don't buy labor, you hire it. HTH, HAND.
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That this has not gone to a Federal Grand Jury appears more like corruption than anything else.
You're just noticing that there is corruption that goes on in favor of big business with impunity in the US? What are you, a fucking Republican?
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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!
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Government has no authority to dictate any salary to anybody whatsoever, it usurped that power that it didn't have and destroyed individual freedoms.
It didn't. It stated that collusion to prevent people from earning a living was illegal collusion.
As to people being out of work, the exact opposite is the case. Without laws that make it extremely expensive and difficult and dangerous (litigation) to hire and fire people, more people have jobs.
It was "free" to hire and fire people, they just illegally colluded to not hire competent people in order to taint the free market. You say that barriers to hiring and firing are bad, it was the companies that erected barriers, not the workers, or the government.
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.
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There's a local shop that hires a mix of experienced developers, kids still in college, and H1Bs... they have horrendous turnover (average tenure 1 year is because the H1Bs stay put. The college kids bolt at first opportunity, and the experienced ones seems to find better things fairly often too...
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Doctors and Lawyers have large lobbying bodies (AMA and ABA, respectively) that represent their interests. Does a comparably large organization exist for Programmers?
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Listen you cheeky little fool, AMA is not a union. You don't get hired by the AMA. You get hired by the company. That is not how a union works. Your employment is controlled by the union.
Nope. When you "work for a union" you are hired by Bob's Electrics, and you are a member of the IBEW. If you let your IBEW membership lapse, then you can lose your employment. The same is true with lawyers. If you want to work as a lawyer for Bob's Lawfirm, you must join the Bar. If you get disbarred while a lawyer, you lose your job as well. But the whole time, you work for Bob, not the union.
The AMA and ABA are unions. They are trade organizations you must join to be in that job.
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I've read a lot of posts in this thread and it is amazingly clear to me that most of the posters here, who I assume are mostly from the US, simply do NOT know how a union works. I'm not sure why this would be, but I do realise that there is a lot of disinformation in the US about unions and they are not held in very high regard.
Here in Australia a union works like this:
- You are hired by your employer as normal.
- Some workplaces have compulsory union membership, which would have been previou
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That is what unions do in the US.
No, that's what CEOs do in the US.
The above poster worked in the USA (Score:2)
As for Detroit - are you kidding? GM and Ford have to deal with far more militant unions overseas in place where they are doing a lot better than in Detroit. Considering trust fund babies like Edsel Ford as the model instead of Henry Ford was what killed Detroit. If you populate management of a large corporation with almost not
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Your blindness is more complete than mine. You have the suicide pact with corporations to rape and pillage.
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You also failed to address how it's possible that the Detroit situation was the fault of unions when GM and Ford are dealing successfully with far more militant unions elsewhere. It just does not make sense. It's the pointless demonization of blaming things on those who cannot shout as loud as others.
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In the US, it doesn't matter whether I sign such a contract or not. It's not valid.
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Right, because industry is collapsing everywhere in the US...
How are the steel mills in PA doing? All closed, but they didn't monoculture the place, so it doesn't show as much blight as Detroit?
Industry (large manufacture of end user products) is collapsing everywhere in the US. Apple, the most profitable manufacturer in the USA manufacturers in China. Dell did "final assembly" in the US, but all the parts were made overseas, and now they even do final assembly overseas as well.
The American makers made sure that if they went down, they'd take Detroit with them.
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A fair number of them only signed those contracts because they really didn't have a choice.
And they treated their employees like shit so often they had no choice but to unionize. Going back to the first "they had no choice" it was the corporation that screwed it up. But yet you hold them blameless.
Toyota manufactures in the USA without UAW "interference", why? Because they don't treat their workers like shit.
The American people collectively have screwed their own country up with a lot of this crap.
"Their" not "our"? Where are you? What country do you claim as "home"?
The corporations screwed it up. They screwed it up so bad, formal aggressive criminal unions were the *only* reas
WTF? When did the strawman walk in? (Score:2)
How about you address at least ONE of the points in the AC's post instead of going off into the far side of crazy and snide comments about "You could all be hoping around on Kangaroos for all I know"?
That way we'd have some idea of what is going on instead of seeing one side of a conversat
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Apparently they do, since both professions have one. Further, both professional bodies have their authority enshrined in law.
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I'm a software packager and I'm represented by a union. I work along side a bunch of programmers, dba's, unix and windows admins - and we are all represented.
I like to think of our union as a catch all - they blow the whistle and step in when management fucks up. A good example of this is they screwed up the budget for raises this year - our representatives stepped in and worked with management to fix that.
I guess if you work somewhere where your managers aren't a bunch of fuckups - you probably don't need
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Well done. Pick the two most unionized professions on the planet as your examples of not needing unions!
Their AMA and the bars have got themselves so deeply in the system you effectively can't practice those professions at all without being a union member.
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THAT is what unions do.
Nope. They protect workers from arbitrary and capricious firings. If the teacher is a pedophile, prove it and fire them. If they are literally illiterate, prove it and fire them. Whining about not being able to prove it to fire them is the reason the unions exist. To stop jackasses like you from making unfounded accusations and expecting mass firings.
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Okay, so long as you admit that you're irrational on the subject and simply want unions for their own sake.
I never said I wanted them. You are making up shit. Why?
If you actually think unions are utterly blameless and have a completely undeserved bad reputation then fine. Live in that fantasy world.
I never said they were blameless. Why are you lying again? It's not like people can scroll up and see that I never said what you are lying about.
anti-union = lying asshole. I couldn't even get past your second sentence without giving up from the number of lies you've told.
Re: (Score:2)
Well your corporations operate in Australia and engage in union breaking activities that interfere with the functioning of democracy, probably based on the experiences that made unions the way they are in America today. Beleive it or not, Australia views unions as a functioning expression of democracy - and they work, so no one is lecturing you, but maybe there is something
Who gets the money? (Score:2)
The lawyers are going to make a yacht-load of money off of this. Will the actual plaintiffs get anything or will they get coupons for discounts on cellphone cases?
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: (Score:2)
Oddly enough I worked at adobe as a TAM (technical account manager) - they let me go and replaced me with 7 Indian employees. The director there was pleased as punch. I heard within a year they lost every support contract I owned - and plenty were worth millions. Funny too - he still works there.
Re: (Score:2)
Former employer's largest customer had issues with their other vendors all outsourcing support to India, causing constant issues, and a steady stream of complaints internally.
Eventually, that employer lost that customer, with the customer complaining that they were too expensive; a new support-contract was signed, which promised to set up a support-center in India to lower the cost.
Moral of the story: Large companies cannot learn, cannot judge quality and only care about cost.
Note: I'm sure there are lots o
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure there are. One thing I noticed though when they were ramping up this initiative (and I was foolishly training them) is they hated to tell anyone - "no" or "sorry thats a bug we'll fix in a patch" or "sorry thats not our issue - its a bug with the xyz driver" - they would drag these customers on for months trying various work-arounds to solve a problem - then when they did seek my advice it look me less than 15-30 minutes to deduce it was a bug - here's when we think a patch might come out.
Re: (Score:2)
Americans also dont shit in a open air community ditch
we get paid more cause it cost more to sustain our level of lifestyle, and as far as equally qualified engineers, the fact your calling software monkies engineers shows your level of smug
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Can somebody please contact his ISP? I can only hope /. has an Abuse department. When an admin contacted us concerning one of our users, we would warn/cut/close the account