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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.
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?
You're implying that it's better to have the potential to gain $50,000 million with high risk than $5,000 million with low risk.
The greatest fallacy of capitalist philosophers is to forget that the system is run by people, and people only live for a small amount of time and with relatively modest material needs.
The greatest success of capitalist practitioners is to take advantage of this and tell the average man that competition is healthy while succeeding at the top through cooperation.
Like Abbott said, white men like to play the game of divide and rule. It has been the crowning principle of the British empire and all its ideological descendants.
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.
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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
Yeah, and while the people are waiting for this eventual collapse, what then? Oh, right, they're just screwed. What a great solution. Saying to let the market decide ignores the fact that these things take time and people get screwed during that time. Yeah, maybe it will EVENTUALLY sort itself out, but in the mean time, we have to put up with something like this and that is bullshit. Laissez-faire was proven pretty early on to be a completely useless government policy and yet people still trot that out like it's some new insight; it is not unlike like trickle down economics. It doesn't work, we know it doesn't work, and yet people still bring it up as a valid argument.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
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.
news for you, that's what cartels do, they put government in their pocket! it's called corruption. all cartels involve government
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.
Hang on. Isn't this essentially trying to operate a tech-labour market cartel?
It's not a prisoner's dilemma as the parties are in regular contact and in the prisoner's dilemma a large part of it is that there is no communication between the parties. A cartel is always going to be better for the individuals than going alone, that's why they form cartels and why antitrust regulations seek to prevent it. OPEC itself has had no problems existing for decades.
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.