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DOJ Investigates Google, Apple, and Others For 'No Poaching' Agreement
CSHARP123 writes "The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the 'No Poaching' agreement between Apple and Google in 2010, but details of the case were only made public for the first time yesterday. TechCrunch was the first to sift through the documents, and has uncovered some ostensibly incriminating evidence against not only Google and Apple, but Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit, as well. According to the filings from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, these companies did indeed enter 'no poach' agreements with each other, and agreed to refrain from soliciting employees. The documents also indicate they collectively sought to limit their employees' power to negotiate for higher salaries."
As my wise Republican candidates have pointed out, this kind of thing is proof that the free market--left to itself and without any government oversight, regulation, or interference--will make things better for all of us. The DoJ needs to get off the backs of these job-creating companies and let them give their employees the freedom that Jesus and Capitalism can only provide when we have a free market with no regulation or oversight. Anything less is socialism.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
we need that money to fuel the lawyers for all our patent violation lawsuits against each other.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
So what? Cartels will naturally fall apart given no government interference. It is in their best interests to cheat on this agreement. Its just like the prisoner's dilemma, while it might be best for all of them to cooperate, they won't because they want an advantage over their competitors. Cartels never last so long as there is a lack of government involvement.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Union actions are public knowledge. Whatever benefits the union gains are slightly counterbalanced by businesses' responses and negative reactions from the public and politicians. Corporate agreements are not public. Someone looking to be hired by one of these companies cannot use it to their advantage in the decision-making process, and they avoid any public reaction.
If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them, but the clandestine nature of the agreements makes it obvious that they already know that there'd be hell to pay.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
in the form of IP laws.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Personally, I'm inclined to agree.
The no-poach agreements reduce the stress on a company that has talent but, in the short term, isn't as desirable as somewhere else. In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal), but rather just from advertising jobs specifically to them because they're at Google. In the long term, employees who are dissatisfied enough will leave eventually. They know the jobs are out there.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It's because nobody in their right mind would go after someone from Microsoft, and everyone who does have talent knows that going to work for Microsoft is a career-ender. It kind of makes them irrelevant to the issue.
Get a load of that coincidence. it 'coincides' just 2 days after sopa protests, and involves almost all major technology companies that have major stakes on internet. Just like how the megaupload bust 'coincided' a day after sopa protests, yesterday.
Read radical news here
In general, employers, especially ones where unions are present, are a relatively small number of groups that wield a lot of organized power.
Conversely, unions, ostensibly*, represent the employees and potential employees, a group which usually has more total power than the employers, but lacks the organization to wield it effectively, often wielding it only to the extant that the weakest and most desperate individuals in the group are willing to wield it. Why? because the employers will take those first, as they are cheaper, and this makes those that were trying to get fair compensation, instead of just any compensation become the weaker and desperate*. Unions can balance the ability to wield power so that the employers are move likely to provide fair compensation. Large employers typically don't need this assistance.
* There are quite a few unions I've seen that seem to only absorb chunks their member's paychecks without actually providing any benefit in bargaining with the employer, effectively acting as a lamprey on capitalism. These days I'm not sure if this is the exception or the rule... At one time, it was the exception.
** there are exceptions to this rule, however, as this is the most profitable way to run a business (get the cheapest labor that will give you the desired quality), this tends to be the trend, and companies not following it will be less profitable, and therefore grow less than companies that do.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
More likely no one trusts them to be a member of a cartel and not stab them in the back.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
Google went from "Do No Evil" to "Amoral Megacorp" in record time. It's the age we live in (everything happens faster).
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Union actions are public knowledge.
Absolutely. They're completely transparent and above-board. Not just to their membership, but the general public.
quite right, when Teamsters or United Steelworkers lay in wait and beat up a scab, it makes the news
It's funny that this drops the same day as the Fortune list of best companies to work for. I see many name here at the top of that list. Not quite sure what to think... I dislike secret corporate agreements, especially to keep salaries down, but I had a fellowship at Intel and found it to be a really good environment, and my colleagues thought so too. At the same time one couldn't help but to notice the incredible number of green badges (contractors) used while Intel posts record quarters. I suppose when you are as big as Intel, it's nearly impossible to be all good, or all evil.
Most B2B contracts I've seen, particularly ones involving services, have a "non-solicit" agreement where each party agrees not to hire the other's employees away for a set period of time. It's not uncommon and I'd be willing to wager that all of these companies have done business with one another in some way, shape or form. Entering into this kind of an agreement without legitimate business that might expose the parties to one another's valuable human resources might be a problem. The part about collectively limiting their employees rights to bargain for raises...well...I don't see how that's possible. My philosophy (and practice) has always been to ask for what you want...if you don't get it, move on...if you DO get what you ask for...then turn right around and decide you want something else...I'd rather have you be the competition's problem. :-)
I used to fear clowns...but I'm discovering that chimps are far, far, worse.
No soliciting is one thing. And I don't really have a problem with that either.
But try working in an area where employers have a 'do not hire' policy. You quit one job and everyone else tells you they won't hire ex-employees of certain companies for a period of time. You might as well step out of the bushes and surrender when you hear the slave hunters' dogs approach.
Have gnu, will travel.
Right. Because who in their right mind would want to, for instance, hire Herb Sutter?
Hang on. Isn't this essentially trying to operate a tech-labour market cartel?
No they aren't.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
...years ago. So if poaching is illegal whats wrong with agreeing not to poach>?
Or maybe because they don't have a large employee base in Silicon Valley?
Certainly MS will pay to relocate desirable employees, but moving to Seattle means that the poaching back and forth of ordinary employees is less likely.
It must be great to be a C-level executive, with a near limitless salary, and not subject to this kind of underhanded collusion because you're making all the rules and approving your own raises.
Ask me about my sig!
Microsoft has a long history of poaching employees. They did it from Borland, Apple, and I'm sure Google as well (Of course many employees also left MS to go to Google. The infamous "chair throwing" incident was because an employee went to google).
Microsoft probably just recognized such an agreement as anti-competitive, or they weren't asked because the others felt adding a monopoly would be unwise. Or maybe MS just wanted to poach people.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
The enrichment of those who own has always far exceeded that of those who actually create.
It's the way of the world.
Not right, but how it is.
Check your premises.
So Google offered me less in salary than they might have without this agreement. I wonder if I could sue them for lost income.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Only acceptable when done by employers, not employees. Got it.
There's that. But it could also be the fact that MS really loves those H-1B Visas and the competition would have a hard time poaching those folks.
So - who's that dude who was supposed to have been buried in concrete, in Chicago? That sure made the news, but no one has bothered to break out the corpse, and charge anyone with his death yet.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Odd that you should phrase it that way. One of my G+ friends just posted this little gem. http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/19/child-slavery-and-chocolate-all-too-easy-to-find/
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Google went from "Do No Evil" to "Amoral Megacorp" in record time. It's the age we live in (everything happens faster).
If Google is a "do-no-evil" company and other are not, logically, to allow Google people to go to work for "do-evil" companies instead would be evil in itself. Therefore, they must not allow it.
Ezekiel 23:20
That's a bald assertion there. By the very nature of a union, it must be public in order to gain members and perform actions like strikes. It's impossible to do that privately. Moreover it's against the (U.S) law to make a secret union. Now, from what reasoning could you possibly conclude they aren't public?
Bald assertions like this make you look bad, and harm your argument.
From what I hear, this whole cozy arrangement has been disrupted by Facebook, which started poaching techies from all of the above with higher pay...
Buried in concrete? That leaves evidence around. Friend from South Chicago says that when Jimmy Hoffa disappeared sausage and hamburger sales in Chicago plummeted for a week.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
if these 7 companies want to have agreements between them, fine - then where are the unions representing all 7 of these companies' tech workers
This is very relevant, and remember that true free market proponents are not against collective bargaining, just against government intervention that manipulates the power of these collectives artificially. Note that government intervention (such as the National Labor Relations Act) both increases the power of these collectives in some ways, while decreasing it in others.
The largest and most powerful unions existed before 1935, when the government started getting intimately involved. Many of those unions were very free-market in that they aggressively competed against each other for membership. Today, membership is enforced rather than competed for.
"His name was James Damore."
There doesn't seem to be too much clear thinking taking place here.
How about the IRS. If the Fed is going full force against silicone valley they certainly want the IRS.
This was excellently described in a Dilbert comic many many moons ago. You see, forming a union requires strong individuals with a lot of backbone to "stand up" to the man. People in the technology are born without backbones, so nobody ever steps up.
+1 Disagree
Not a question of whether it should be. It is different. Unions have an antitrust exemption; corporations don't.
Just like with unions, problems aren't a reason to reject the notion entirely. Regulate them, instead.
I'd like to see enforced regulation of no-poach agreements. Sure, you can prevent others from hiring people who quit your workplace - but you'll need to keep paying them after they leave, regardless of why they left. If your company's talent and secrets are worth enough that you'll screw up someone's career, they should be worth throwing a bit of money after.
Yes, it'll annoy the free-market crowd here, but I'm generally in favor of more regulation everywhere - as long as it's determined by competent regulators who understand the field they're working with.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
By the very nature of a union, it must be public in order to gain members and perform actions like strikes
Wow. You are either incredibly naive and ignorant of history (which includes time periods like earlier this morning), or you are a very, very bad union shill that should explore other work before they start the decade-long process of trying to fire you, if they can, or simply wack you, because that involves fewer hearings.
Unions are famous for being run be people who conduct back-room political deals. Negotiations over things like pay and contract terms are held behind closed doors. Turf agreements between two overlapping unions involve lots of hidden negotiations and payoffs (consider, for example, how the Long Shoremen and the Teamsters decide at which mark on the concrete at the dock each of their guys must stop what they're doing and hand the task over to someone else). Entities like that wheel and deal out of view of their members and the public all the time. Agreements between unions (just like the agreements alluded to between Apple and Google) are made to benefit the two parties who agree on mutual behavior. Big Labor is every bit as careful to maximize their power, revenue, influence, and the pay made by their managers as any other large entity with a profit motive.
Ever worked a trade show in a place like Chicago or Las Vegas? No? You have absolutely no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I can't resist submitting these Adam Smith (the idol of free market advocates) lines copied from Wikipedia:
"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate [...] Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people". In contrast, when workers combine, "the masters [...] never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen."
Smith, of source, said it much better than the clowns who opine here.
"If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them. "
No they aren't. It's called collusion. Unions do not form an effective monopoly but corporate competitors colluding DO form such a monopoly and the law must prevent this. Not only for the anti-competitive aspects but because it tosses the HUMANS right to pursue happiness out the window.
I'm near 50, I used to work in manufacturing plant in the Chicago Stockyards (an industrial park that includes rendering plants but also machine, fab, and factories). Every now and then the smell from the hog rendering plant would be a bit off, maybe my imagination but kind of smelling like maybe some hair, bones and toenails in the mix.....just sayin.....
How do you define poaching. After all, regardless of who initiates the conversation it is always the corporation that extends the offer so you could say any hiring is poaching.
This kind of thing could make you unhirable to the best market for your skills. If you work for a vendor supporting their product that vendor will typically require a non-compete from you and a non-poaching agreement from all their partners... basically everyone who wants the skills you have. There will be a time limit on this, maybe 5 yrs but this is tech. 5yr old expertise is the same as not having any.
Please mod parent up for this perfectly fitting Adam Smith quote... Perhaps one should post some juicy exercepts about his thoughts on why corporations are a perversion of the free market... Conservatives always seem to skip that chapter :)
Google's motto was never "Do no evil".
Dilbert RSS feed
There are quite a few unions I've seen that seem to only absorb chunks their member's paychecks without actually providing any benefit in bargaining with the employer, effectively acting as a lamprey on capitalism
All bureaucracies devolve into self sustaining organisms, or they die. When sufficiently threatened, they will cast off all other raison d'être, except for that self survivable mode. At this point, they either live or die, and if they live, there's not much left to help anyone but the bureaucrats.
There have been cases where a Union allowed weak members to be fired, rather than allowing non-union employees to work for a certain employer. (Indiana Art teachers 40 years or so ago. And after they were hired back, the Union still required them to join the Union)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I agree with you, but let me play devils advocate... Are they really colluding as competitors though? They may or may not be actual competitors in SELLING their products and are not colluding on that front, however labor is something they are in BUYING competition on.
In other words, does collusion between corporations who are in BUYING competition with apply to current anti-trust laws?
If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them,
Sure about that? I doubt corporations are allowed to collude like this, even if they make it public. Unions on the other hand are encouraged to do so.
Kind of like price fixing; corporations can't get together and decide how much to charge for their products, but workers are allowed to form unions and decide how much to charge for their product (labor).
It's not Google per se, it's the amoral business school ethic being pushed at any publicly traded company. I knew this would start happening as soon as they had their IPO. When you've got upper and middle managers who think anything legal (or just illegal enough to tie up in courts for years) is justifiable in the name of profit, then crap like this happens. And, with every person with a 401k in the country cheering on CEOs for matching quarterly estimates, it'll never change.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'll define it by example, based on what I've seen firsthand: Initech was doing fairly well. Initrode wasn't doing so well, but had some new projects they were starting. Initrode sent letters to everybody they could contact as Initech, trying to recruit Initech's talent as their own. To me, that's the bad part of poaching, because it's clearly intended to specifically hurt competitors, and it cuts the public out of the chance to apply.
I personally haven't had much experience under non-compete contracts, but the ones I have used have been fairly limited in their scope. The widest one I've had prevented me from working in an equal role at any competitor in the same market. As that was explained to me, I could work tech support, database support, QA, or the like at a competitor, but not as a plain old "software developer". That agreement was also for only 6 months, so it didn't bother me much. Personally, I'm okay with contracts like that. I'm sure there are far worse out there, but I don't know how common they are.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I love your cloistered neckbeard delusions. Microsoft has the money to hire the best talent and they have done so. But you just go on thinking whatever you want to think.
Wrong, as this violates my Right to Work.
Poaching talent from competitors has always been a core business strategy at MS, they were doing to to DEC and IBM back in the '90s. They wouldn't have had any interest at all in entering an agreement like that.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Yes, it should. Having limits in the buyers can have just as adverse affects on the markets as limits in the providers.
No. Just no. Essentially, you're saying that corporations should not have to work as hard to actually keep their employees. That just seems flat out wrong.
These agreements infringe upon the employee's Right to Work.
In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal)
Except... that's what they do.
If they are willing to keep paying me during that period, I guess it's not terrible, but I still don't like the idea of allowing this shit.
"The largest and most powerful unions existed before 1935, when the government started getting intimately involved. "
There were also several massacres at corporate request during those times too.
Because apparently banding together to leverage more power than you could individually is seen as "being weak" and "SOCIALIZM!!!"
This is very relevant, and remember that true free market proponents are not against collective bargaining, just against government intervention that manipulates the power of these collectives artificially.
While they're not against collective bargaining, they're against anything that would actually give the union clout. Most of them think it's perfectly fine for an employer to summarily execute^W fire anyone who even breathes a word of organization. They basically say, "You can have your union, you just can't let it have any effect on negotiations."
That's right! That's why men should get regular pregnancy tests, and that's why bald people should shampoo daily, and that's why blind people shouldn't be allowed to have seeing eye dogs. Any recognition of differences is imposition of inequality! Fight the power! WHEELCHAIRS FOR EVERYONE!
"Personally, I'm okay with contracts like that."
How much worse does it have to get? Your agreement said that you couldn't perform the same job for six months after leaving. Working the same job when you switch from company to company is called a career. Fortunately that non-compete effectively prevents you from working in your chosen profession (software developer) and any non-compete that does so is null and void legally AFAIK.
BTW having now read TFA it clearly states that the anti-poaching agreements prevented the companies from hiring each others workers even if they voluntarily applied for the position.
"Initrode sent letters to everybody they could contact as Initech, trying to recruit Initech's talent as their own. To me, that's the bad part of poaching, because it's clearly intended to specifically hurt competitors, and it cuts the public out of the chance to apply."
I disagree. Competition is a good thing. When they are trying to recruit the talent from the other company they are also offering them a higher salary. This results in increasing average salaries in that profession. That is good for pretty much everyone. If Initech is paying their employees a generous wage and benefit package then Initrode won't have much luck.
The only reason for not wanting this is because companies don't want to have to offer and maintain generous wage and benefits packages. Companies want to cheat by hiring employees with less skill but raw potential at a low salary, encourage and sometimes even force those employees to develop their skills but keep them at a salary in the ballpark of their entry level skill set even though they now possess a skill set worth far more. Training in house is a valid strategy for having staff with a known skill set and competency and for minimizing the cost of those who don't work out. It isn't a valid strategy for avoiding paying competitive wages for their talent after it is developed.
If three year old children don't go to jail for hitting and kicking an adult man, then surely an adult man shouldn't go to jail for hitting and kicking a three your old child, right?
The purpose of a union is to make the relationship more even, instead of huge organization vs. single person it should be at least huge organization vs. union of persons. This deal meant that as a single person, you might not be fighting just the one huge organization that employs you, but other huge organizations as well. There is also the monopoly / oligopoly argument. If you have several huge organizations, they still have to compete for their employees. If you have only one huge organization, or an oligopoly, then there is no competition anymore.
Competent Regulators??.....well there's your problem right there. If you do happen to find those competent regulators, good luck finding some incorruptible ones. The reasons to minimize regulation frequently have more to do the regulators than the content of the regulations.
they're against anything that would actually give the union clout.
What gave unions clout before 1935?
Most of them think it's perfectly fine for an employer to summarily execute
There is a lot of violence in the past, but you are just claiming that free market supporters are in favor of it because you apparently dont like free market supporters so much that you are willing to shamefully claim heinous things about them without any support at all.
You seem to have this idea that even though you cant defend your beliefs, someone else must be able to and that that gives you the moral authority to make things up in order to mount the defense that you just can't believe is missing from the discussion.
"His name was James Damore."
It can be traced back to them going public.
Some of us could care less about the pay. Its about professional advancement, building your career, networking with others in your industry, etc. You could sit and collect a paycheck for the next 5 or 10 years. And then find yourself totally worthless in the industry. And then what?
Have gnu, will travel.
I couldn't actually find any mention of Google in the document that was released. Much was blacked out, but can anyone see the evidence that Google took part in this?
as long as it's determined by competent regulators who understand the field they're working with.
<mythbusters> Well there's your problem! </mythbusters>
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Oh, never mind. It seems that the Scribd search box doesn't work.
Google went from "Do No Evil" to "Amoral Megacorp" in record time. It's the age we live in (everything happens faster).
No they didn't, they just got lazy about maintaining their public image.
Yep, I had to save up for a 6 month "vacation" when I last switched jobs in the SF Bay area. I had been working for one of the data center providers that serviced most of the companies in the region. Tied to their hosting contract, was a do not hire clause with a six month window, and I was told by HR that the only reason it wasn't "illegal" was because the agreement wasn't between the employee and company directly. It has been an open secret for some time that most of the major players also have these agreements in place. It is particularly frustrating, and effectively the same as a black list (which is illegal in CA), so I'm glad the practice is finally being investigated.
Negotiations happen in 'back rooms' all the time. The point is we know these negotiations are going on with Unions, with these companies we don't.
I'd be fine if the companies publicly stated :
"We are working together to make sure we as corporations pay as little to employees as possible by talking about your pay behind closed doors and promising each other not to hire from each other"
Then I'd at least be informed and be able to make my decision on who I'd want to work with. Just like I can decide not to work for a company that has a union.
Power corrupts; absolute power, corrupts absolutely. There is no surprise here, simply the time it took for the companies to be investigated.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
To be perfectly honest, if I had to sit around for 10 years (properly funded, mind you, so I won't starve and can still function in the economy) I would have my own killer product and/or software at the end of that time in a totally unrelated field.
I certainly wouldn't mind someone paying me to stay at home for a year - right now I have a few feasible products that I could develop if I could just get the time...
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
When I worked for HP about 20 years ago they used to herd all the employees into presentations every year at annual raise time and tell us with great pride that they had their HR people meet with HR people from every other big engineering employer in the bay area to define job descriptions and benefits including salaries, vacation, and annual raises. The purpose of this was to indirectly tell everyone "don't bother looking for work elsewhere- you won't get a better deal". I eventually went to work for a smaller company that wasn't in that "negotiating" (i.e. price-fixing) group for a substantial raise and an extra week of vacation time.
You are mistaken my friend.
Ron Paul believes the only role the federal government should play, is to preserve the rights of the individual. Every action he takes and word he speaks supports this viewpoint. The idea is that policy decisions ("regulations") should focus more on an individual's right to choose, rather than make that choice for them. This means improving contract law, preventing monopolies, encouraging market diversity/competition, and equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to make rational ("self serving") free-market decisions.
What a lot of people don't realize, is that Ron Paul is the only candidate that presents a real threat to big business. This is why so much money is spent on keeping him out of the public eye, and discrediting his viewpoints.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
That's not entirely accurate. The Unions can decide to charge so much for their labor, but they have to be reasonable to what the employer is willing to pay, just as the company must do with the products they sell. You wouldn't pay $5.00 a pack for a Kool-Aide packet so for the same reason Companies won't pay someone $25.00 to stand at the end of a line and tape boxes shut. However, if Kraft foods and it's competitors decide to get together and make you pay $1.00 per pack then you'd really have no choice but to either pay it or go without. In the sense of labor, the supply greatly outstrips demand which is why labor must band together to prevent the companies from colluding in such a manner as to drive wages down to the unlivable range. Labor unions are about helping the people that produce where the corporations are more centered on creating wealth for investors and only care about labor as a means to an end and not an essential part of the equation.
I got here through a series of tubes
Because apparently banding together to leverage more power than you could individually is seen as "being weak" and "SOCIALIZM!!!"
Only if you're a provider of labor. If you're a provider of capital then it's called a "corporation" and it's considered the best thing since sliced bread ;-)
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
Moreover it's against the (U.S) law to make a secret union.
They're called affairs, and they're not illegal, they're simply immoral, which means most people have them but say they don't, and those who don't wish they did.
The only reason for not wanting this is because companies don't want to have to offer and maintain fair wage and benefits packages.
FTFY
I got here through a series of tubes
In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal)
Except... that's what they do.
And that's bad.
I'm not saying companies shouldn't have to keep employees happy, just that they shouldn't need to worry (much) about competitors attacking their talent directly and specifically. Attacks like that (mixed with overprotective managers, who may very well otherwise be decent managers) lead to environments with no email access, mandatory recorded phone conversations, excessive claims of trade secrets, and the like. I think it's better that a company make itself more attractive in public, because that means that issues besides salary become a bigger part of the hiring process. At the moment, there's a few organizations I'd work for below minimum wage, just because I like what they're working on and want to be a part of it.
I'd rather see regulation of no-poach agreements, to limit the attacks companies can launch against each other. I'd like the government to mandate that hiring is perfectly fine, regardless of any no-poach contract, but advertising jobs directly to a competitor is determined by the agreement.
As usual, I see two ways to approach the problem. There's the free-market solution, where everyone is expected to be selfish and nasty and the few who survive can't get strong enough to kill each other off. Then there's the regulation solution, where the government steps in and forces the corporate "children" to play nice and share. I prefer the latter, but it does assume responsible "parenting". I'm an optimist.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I'm a free market guy, and this doesn't sound entirely crazy. If you are preventing someone from getting work, you are on the hook for paying them.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Your agreement said that you couldn't perform the same job for six months after leaving.
For a direct competitor. Let's say I was a software developer for a photographic lab. I could go across the street and be a developer for a healthcare provider, with no contractual problems. The contract language was written so as to give a bit more protection against having someone poached because of the secrets they held, rather than their abilities. I think that's a reasonable goal.
BTW having now read TFA it clearly states that the anti-poaching agreements prevented the companies from hiring each others workers even if they voluntarily applied for the position.
And that's bad.
When they are trying to recruit the talent from the other company they are also offering them a higher salary. This results in increasing average salaries in that profession. That is good for pretty much everyone. If Initech is paying their employees a generous wage and benefit package then Initrode won't have much luck.
Which means that Microsoft, Apple, and Google are now untouchable, because they can offer far higher salaries than any small local company, without making much of a dent in their giant cash reserves. I'm not suggesting preventing companies from competing, but just force competition into the public space. I'd like regulation of no-poach agreements to encourage hiring based on a person's knowledge and expertise, rather than where they last worked. Competing companies can offer a higher salary for a position, but it should be advertised, and open to anyone qualified.
...force those employees to develop their skills but keep them at a salary in the ballpark of their entry level skill set even though they now possess a skill set worth far more.
The employee should realize that they're worth more, and should (in an ideal magical world of unicorns, happiness, and competent government officials) not be prevented from voluntarily going elsewhere with their valuable skills.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Wow, way to partially quote me. I made the joking reference to execution, but if you actually read my comment, the actual danger is that most of them believe that the employer should be able to simply get rid of any worker who makes any reference to unionization. Meaning that, while you free marketers give lip service to the idea of collective bargaining, you don't think that it should actually happen. Meaning that the idea of it, from your perspective, is completely worthless. What good is the right to collective bargaining if any employer is just going to take his ball and go home? Especially to those who need the right to collectively bargain the most: the unskilled and lightly skilled laborers who, on their own, have almost no bargaining power at all?
You seem to have this idea that everything must be taken completely literally. Maybe you should brush up on your reading comprehension.
I've worked with regulators firsthand before, and I personally have seen more misinformation than actual corruption. Now, there is lots of money floating around, but there's so much from all sides that the money doesn't matter much. Rather, the important thing is how well a point is made during the lunch/dinner/lapdance that the various representatives are paying for.
Silly things like facts, numbers, and side-by-side comparisons are rarely seen. Science is left at the door. Instead, the party is surrounded by fallacies, lies, and appeals to emotion.
The move toward having smartphones as a primary mechanism for knowledge can't come fast enough, in my opinion.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
With pigs, hair and bones and toenails aren't murder evidence that you have to destroy. That said, they probably get ground for animal feed to avoid wasting anything that could make a profit.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
That's fine if you work in an industry where that's possible. If you want to work in the utility biz, for example, good luck starting your own power company.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's fine if you work in an industry where that's possible. If you want to work in the utility biz, for example, good luck starting your own power company.
I thought I was being clear, but apparently not. What I mean is, I would use those ten years to do something *other* than what I used to. I can write software for an entirely new domain, for example, or experiment with logic games for tablets, or perhaps write a full textbook or complete a few degrees.
The point would be to use the paid-for and enforced sabbatical to flex your skills in a different domain. Sure, if I was employed in the IT dept of a power company and they had restrictions on working for other power companies IT departments, then I'd go off and write stock-market software, or similar (and still get paid for not working in power companies!).
My point was not "If they pay me to sit around doing nothing, I'm going to compete with them when the time is up", and I'm not altogether too sure how you interpreted my post to say that.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
IT workers rarely have the chance to form unions though. If they had unions then fair enough but instead they have to work tons of unpaid overtime and potentially lose ownership of code written in their own time.
What specific positions and policies does Mr Paul believe in which act for the purpose of "preventing monopolies, encouraging market diversity/competition" against the self-interest of incumbent providers of goods and services who freely and willingly attempt to assert monopolies and discourage market diversity & competition?"
Any which are NOT 'stopping government regulation'?
a) Police officers are civilians.
b) They do have first amendment rights. Just not on the job. Exactly as every other employee in the world.
c) Journalists can contribute as they desire. Their employer may not like it, but the government has no rules against it.
d) Pedophiles can live where ever they want as long as 1) they don't act on their feelings and/or 2) they've never been caught and convicted.
e) No one thinks corporations are people. Corporations are collections of people and just because people act together there is no reason that they shouldn't be able to speak. Or would you rather Google, Wikipedia, etc. not have been able to make the statements they made on Wednesday?
"If they want to make these "corporate unions" public they're welcome to have them. "
No they aren't. It's called collusion. Unions do not form an effective monopoly but corporate competitors colluding DO form such a monopoly
Oh really? Have you ever tried getting a job at the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale docks, specially a well paid job in one of them tugboats? You don't get a job there unless you have a close relative working those jobs already with the union's blessing. It might not fit the kosher definition of a mercantile monopoly, but it sure gets very close in spirit.
I have a couple in-laws who are retired from the miami docks. They are (or were) run by the mafia and that's another animal entirely. Despite a couple major well known exceptions, most other unions aren't run by the mob.
"Which means that Microsoft, Apple, and Google are now untouchable, because they can offer far higher salaries than any small local company"
For a little while. But before long their higher overhead will cause them to flop.
"Competing companies can offer a higher salary for a position, but it should be advertised, and open to anyone qualified."
Why? If a company wants to hire Linus Torvalds specifically who are you to tell them they have to put up some public posting? Employees seek out specific employers or subsets of employers what is wrong with companies soliciting talent? There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking out say, Cisco support staff to be admins managing your Cisco gear. If you are willing to pay more than Cisco than what is wrong with that? We aren't talking about preferential hiring based on race, gender, or other protected classifications we are talking about companies hiring personal based upon specific experience they have that others don't. I see nothing wrong with the aforementioned company putting up an ad if they choose that lists having a year with Cisco as a specific requirement.
Companies have no problem with squeezing every dollar their clients and customers will tolerate out them. They call it supply and demand. Employees and prospective employees should be free to do the same thing. Who knows companies might begin treating their workers like people again instead of disposable drones so that when the time comes they actually feel like they are part of a team and have loyalty to that team.
Yes.
Collusion among horizontal competitors (i.e. not up-and-down the supply chain, but across it with other companies on the same level of industry) is problematic (read: potentially illegal and contact a good antitrust lawyer) under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
The Act technically limits "restraint of trade," but that would, if read literally, prevent all commerce. Basically, Congress left it completely up to the courts to determine what anti-trust policy would be, by legislating very generically, in part because every case is quite different.
The courts don't like horizontal collusion.
The major players implicated here control enough of the market that the anti-trust people in government (the DOJ and the FTC are the big players, though I think the SEC and a few others sometimes nibble) will not be happy.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The docks in Los Angeles (San Pedro) are the same. It's all "in the family". I know a guy who lived next to one of the big cheeses of the Dockworkers union. They would greet each other and make smalltalk across the hedges, but this guy's smalltalk was things like, "Yeah...so you know Jim? Yeah, well Jim wasn't happy with our deal, so we had to talk to sense into him.With a couple baseball bats. After our conversation, I put him in the car and said to give my best to his wife. I think we're on the same page now."
I believe in unions, but I do think they need to be regulated in a different way in the USA so that they are democratic institutions that aren't co-opted by a small power elite at the top.
But I guess I could say this about the United States government as well.
The point is we know these negotiations are going on with Unions
Really? You know that multiple unions will get together behind the scenes and agree on tactics that will force their mutual customers to deal with them and to pay higher wages? You know when two different unions are making arrangements that benefit only each other and not the businesses that - through hidden actions by the unions - have no choice and must deal with them? How much do you know about those deals? They're not talked about publicly, they're not part of any written contracts, they're not part of any press release, and no union boss will publicly admit engaging in them. Is that the transparency you're referring to? Or, are you saying that such arrangements are - despite never being disclosed - something that large organizations have every right to make, and that's why it's OK for unions to make them ... but not for employers to make them?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Maybe the answer is that the company also can't hire anyone to do your old job for the same six months.
Ugh. That saying has been around for at least 30 years. My guess would be that it originates in the car repair industry, so it could be 100 years or more.
Oh, and Tebow is not original either.
the normal smell of the plant was something like the snack "Pork Rinds" plus bacon and ham. Those parts of which you speak weren't normally put into rendering vats. Sure, it could have just been a mistake and they ruined a batch.......
Ever worked a trade show in a place like Chicago or Las Vegas? No? You have absolutely no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Part of the reason CES left Chicago is the smaller vendors wouldn't/couldn't afford to pay a union electrician the exorbitant minimum fee to do something as simple as plug a device into a power outlet. I kid you not - if you were (for example) a boutique loudspeaker vendor with one product and all you had to do was plug in the power amp/preamp/CD player running the speakers you're demoing and you did it yourself, you better have someone sleeping in your booth or room overnight because the next morning there was a chance something would be damaged, and all anyone could do is shrug. The damage would never happen to the vendors that paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for what amounted to an hour or less of actual electrical work.
Its not a matter of competing with your ex-employer or not. And the 'do not hire' agreements reach far beyond the narrow field of your previous job.
The point is: They don't want employees shopping around for jobs. Not just in their line of business, but in general. And once you've left, the point isn't to get you to come back. Its to serve you up as an example to other employees as what can happen to you if you too get the smart-ass idea to walk out.
Yeah, I'm rich. I can take a couple of years off and write some code. Or spend it as a ski bum, or on my yacht. But even if your employer is willing to finance that lifestyle, not everyone would want to. Some people like to work and they like to work in a certain domain. So if the local employers have a policy of f*cking with anyone that walks away, that's enough pressure to discourage most people.
Have gnu, will travel.
Its not a matter of competing with your ex-employer or not. And the 'do not hire' agreements reach far beyond the narrow field of your previous job.
I have to say that all the agreements I've seen (and signed) since I started working in the mid-nineties were not broad - all specified a restriction to working for a competitor or in the same domain. None of them specified that I could not work in software development, only that I could not develop software for a specific domain.
The point is: They don't want employees shopping around for jobs. Not just in their line of business, but in general. And once you've left, the point isn't to get you to come back. Its to serve you up as an example to other employees as what can happen to you if you too get the smart-ass idea to walk out.
True, but I've not seen any evidence that they are actually able to follow through on it - for example the agreements that you sign don't say that you can't work in general, which is what you appear to be claiming.
Yeah, I'm rich. I can take a couple of years off and write some code. Or spend it as a ski bum, or on my yacht. But even if your employer is willing to finance that lifestyle, not everyone would want to. Some people like to work and they like to work in a certain domain. So if the local employers have a policy of f*cking with anyone that walks away, that's enough pressure to discourage most people.
Paying you to do nothing for a few years is not exactly f*ucking with anyone that walks away, and I'm guessing that any company that actually gains a reputation for paying people for not working is going to have a hard time retaining the smart people who may already have something they want to start but can't afford to be without a paycheck for 12 months while their idea is developed and/or takes off.
Remember, the original argument of mine was that a restriction against working is not that bad if they are willing to foot the bill. You appear to be claiming that even if they foot the bill, it's still bad.
I figure that if they get a reputation for footing the bill for everyone who resigns, then the smartest of the people will go first. Only the ones who have no motivation to do their own thing will stay, and those are probably not the best people anyway. In other words, it's self-defeating for a company to specify bans on working, unless they also refuse to pay you during your enforced non-working period.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.