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Judge Denies Class Action Status In Tech Workers' Lawsuit
We've mentioned a few times the "gentleman's agreements" which some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley used to reduce the risk of employee poaching. walterbyrd writes "This comes from the same judge who awarded Apple $1 billion from Samsung. 'A federal judge on Friday struck down an effort to form a class action lawsuit to go after Apple, Google and five other technology companies for allegedly forming an illegal cartel to tamp down workers' wages and prevent the loss of their best engineers during a multiyear conspiracy broken up by government regulators.'" The lawsuit itself is ongoing (thanks to a ruling last year by the same judge); it's just that the plaintiff's claims cannot be combined.
But they're mere workers.
Judges are part of the ruling class. Oh wait, America doesn't have class, right? And it's certainly not true that 95% of political donations come from .05% of Americans, right?
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The point of a class-action lawsuit isn't to earn a gob of cash, it's to facefist the company into changing their behaviour from whatever was it that they were doing to fuck people over. Any cash you get is just a bonus.
I assure that as soon as word got out, the companies changed their behavior. I'm in one of those companies. The CEO was a fucking idiot to put that in an email. I'm glad he's leaving.
This is true. The (allegedly) wronged employees will likely end up doing much better as individual plaintiffs. Read John Grisham's "The King of Torts" for some insight into the world of class action litigation. It's clearly a work of fiction, but lawyer acquaintances have told me that it's a fair description of how such litigation works.
We all know what happens when prices go up without bound. Think about it. Programmers jumping around from job to job while their salaries keep soaring. Eventually they're asking for so much money that companies decide to just not hire them. Bring in more H1-B's, Salaries plummet, and in the end we all lose... I think it's best to keep control and prevent an 'engineers market flash crash'.
The trouble is(that while class actions do generally pay the lawyers too much and the class too little) the alternative to a class action is generally inaction, which pays the class nothing and doesn't even cost the malefactor money.
The 'transaction costs', so to speak, of taking something to court are high. Doubly so(if you are lucky, could be substantially more than doubly) if you are going up against a deep-pocketed foe who really doesn't want adverse precedent or inconvenient discovery to take place. For anything outside of the most trivial cases, this means that your right to individual redress in civil court is mostly theoretical.
What I find most odd about the denial of 'class' status in this case is that an illegal cartel arrangement to push down wages is exactly the sort of situation where it would be very difficult for any specific employee(unless they are allowed to take their case to discovery and dig up a bunch of juicy internal documents mentioning them by name) to prove any specific salary delta between the competitive and noncompetitive situations; but it should be relatively simple(by economic modeling standards) to arrive at an approximate figure for overall savings on wages by the cartel members. And, while precisely allocating the unpaid hypothetical wages to the people who lost them would be gravy, just getting to the point where the malefactors are punished would at least have deterrent value, and hopefully make such agreements less common elsewhere and in the future.
Documents filed in the lawsuit indicated executives knew they were behaving badly. Both [Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Google] Schmidt and Intel CEO Paul Otellini indicated that they were worried about the anti-recruiting agreements being discovered, according to declarations cited in Koh's ruling. Nevertheless, Schmidt still fired a Google recruiter who riled Jobs by contacting an Apple employee, according to evidence submitted in the case.
Well that seems a bit evil, wouldn't you say?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Hideki!
Programmers jumping around from job to job while their salaries keep soaring. Eventually they're asking for so much money that companies decide to just not hire them.
That's not true where I live. Maybe out in CA - which I think the tech market in Silicon is in it's own little World.
Salaries peaked in the late 90s- early - '00s. And that happened to be when :
Globalization really took off.
Changes in technology. Most of work I had in the late 90s was distributed systems on Unix/Linux/Windows - writing the middle ware (in C++), the data transfer to RDBMs, and other stuff that folks just don't do anymore.
Really, who writes their own middleware anymore? They go with a solution from IBM, MS, Oracle, SAP or something these days. Or internet solutions. So there is less demand for programmers.
I think if the Silicon Valley companies look outside of their little World and realize that, for one, their technology isn't so groundbreaking after all, and for another, maybe could move development operations to let's say, Metro Atlanta where Lockheed just canned a bunch of really talented guys? And the cost of living is a fraction of out in the Bay area so that a coder can make a living on $70K/ year - even it IS a cut in pay from the '00s, it's at least a job. But then again, the businesses where I live offer real products and services that actually contribute to the economy - not high profile fluff. Here you'll work on an integration with others systems or something else that allows someone to do a job. Not for someone to indulge their narcissism; which seems to be the major business of Silicon Valley these.days.
tl;dr: the California tech community is very short sighted when it comes to their hiring practices.
No the point is a cash grab for the lawyers, the people in the class action lawsuit dontget anything, but the lawyers get another million to 10 million to buy yet another yacht or villa in colorado.
Lawyers love class action lawsuits, it can make a lawyer a multi millionaire quickly.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The judge made one truly epic level bad decision with the Apple Samsung case, is anyone surprised she did the same thing with another case? The whole situation is deplorable and needs a significant legal remedy to prevent it from ever happening again.
to buy yet another yacht or villa in colorado.
Villas in Colorado? That would put them a long way from their yacht...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
but they do tend to side with the property owners, because that's their sorta people. The 'class' if you will.
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ROFL. What a fanboi dilemma.
A computer security company called Accuvant in Colorado has a neat little 'no hire' agreement with over 70 partner companies. Including Symantec, McAfee, Palo Alto and other big names in computer security as well as other consulting companies like Dyntek. Essentially if you work for them you cannot be hired by any of those companies. There is no extra pay to the employee or other compensation for it as well. They use that as a means of limiting what they pay their employees. Of course you don't hear about it until after you've been hired and been brought into the system. At that point you find a lot of the common career progression paths immediately blocked by their agreement.
John Galt is a sociopath.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Next time, vote independent or socialist.
So what is the alternative? In most class action lawsuits the damages to each plaintiff are small. So they have the choice of either joining the class and getting a few bucks (let's say X bucks), or suing on their own and getting 2*X, but having to pay their lawyers 100*X.
Sure class action lawyers rip of their clients, but let's try to fix that, instead of fighting against the whole concept of class action. A good first step could be requiring the lawyers to be paid in the same manner as their clients - if they manage to negotiate a 10$ discount on the next purchase as compensation for their clients, then the lawyers should also be paid in discount vouchers.
If it's not their first yacht, they probably already have property near the ocean, thus a villa in Colorado might be useful for skiing or some such.
No poach agreements are just another form of price fixing. While companies may be on friendly or less than friendly terms, as long as they are separate companies, they have no right to enter into price fixing agreements. These agreements keep wages below market rates. Someone who might earn $300,000 a year in a free market might only earn $250,000 because other companies won't make competing offers with their current offer.
While losing employees causes a lot of disruption to a company, potential loss of IP, etc. this is just part of the game. All monopolies and cartels can offer plausible sounding reasons why the "order" that they impose on the market is better than competition, but as a society we decided long ago that the free market works better. So it doesn't matter what other benefits these companies claim no-poach agreements have, they are still illegal price fixing.
The only exception I can think of is a prohibition on people who move from company A to company B, contacting their co-workers in company A, in their capacity as an employee of company B. This could be considered in improper use of that person's professional contacts at company A. However a recruiter using public information to contact an employee at another company should always be not only allowed, but encouraged.
Can Everyone just take them to small clams court? All IT workers from the companies in Small clames court = lots of money to be paid out and lot of lawyers if they want to defend all the law sues.
True, yet in no way contradicting my point.
Which is that the class action lawsuit does its good by punishing the company with a huge-ass combined fine, thus forcing them to alter their behaviour.
Can Everyone just take them to small clams court? All IT workers from the companies in Small clames court = lots of money to be paid out and lot of lawyers if they want to defend all the law sues.
Class action is the ONLY remedy; permit me to illustrate my point.
Judge: So what are the damages you are asking for, sir?
Nerd: I want the difference between what I was making over the years I was employed at A and not B.
Judge: Based on the money B would have offer you, had they actually offered you a job?
Nerd: Yes.
Judge: Based on them wanting to hire you in the first place?
Nerd: Yes.
Judge: anything else I should know?
Nerd: I also want damages for emotional distress.
Judge: For all that time you spent at A instead of B?
Nerd: Yes.
Judge: Due to a practice which you were unaware of until just recently?
Nerd: I have retroactive emotional distress.
Judge: Dismissed. Next!
Like the ones where the "punishment" was a coupon? I don't think that had the result you are stating it had. I've received 2 coupons for classactions I've "won". One for Amazon and one for Microsoft. I redeemed neither. I've also received a check for $0.49 for another long ago. I never cashed it.
Learn to love Alaska
If that's what someone wants, then who cares? People should be allowed to join class action lawsuits if they wish to.
to buy yet another yacht or villa in colorado.
Villas in Colorado? That would put them a long way from their yacht...
That's what the private jet is for.
GP post is right - typical class action lawsuit:
1. Lawyers get millions.
2. Consumers get coupon for $5 off their NEXT purchase of the bad company's product.
You'd think lawyers make all the damn laws and are always the damn judges.
First thing we do, kill all the lawyers. Yeah, I know what Shakespeare meant. But that was a long time ago. Meanings change.
Q: What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.
Q: What do you call a busload of lawyers going over a cliff?
A: A comedy.
Q: If there's an empty seat?
A: A tragedy.
Remember - if we whacked all the lawyers, we'd whack damn near all the politicians. That's NOT a coincidence.
That is extremely evil, even if Google no longer uses or advertises their original mantra of "Don't Be Evil". Their having had such a mantra as a motto, and not having it now anymore is public renunciation of not being evil which IMHO is equivalent to "Yes, Be Evil!!!" as a positive declaration. So there, I've said it. Google's new motto must be "Yes, Be Evillll!!!" (add a laugh, or cackle, as needed), as it has been proven linguamathacontextually equal. QED. Feynman. Fine Women. Help, I'm drowning in a stream of consciousness...
What I find most odd about the denial of 'class' status in this case is that an illegal cartel arrangement to push down wages is exactly the sort of situation where it would be very difficult for any specific employee(unless they are allowed to take their case to discovery and dig up a bunch of juicy internal documents mentioning them by name) to prove any specific salary delta between the competitive and noncompetitive situations; but it should be relatively simple(by economic modeling standards) to arrive at an approximate figure for overall savings on wages by the cartel members. And, while precisely allocating the unpaid hypothetical wages to the people who lost them would be gravy, just getting to the point where the malefactors are punished would at least have deterrent value, and hopefully make such agreements less common elsewhere and in the future.
Actually, the way that collusion by employers has been curtailed in the the past is through the use of..... UNIONS.....
While I agree that the original intent of unions has been perverted over the years by the mob, politics, etc., this is one area where having a union actually would be a solution.
In addition, one can include temporary, contingent, casual, staffing firm, and any other form of labor that isn't a directly-hired FT employee.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If recent political events have not impacted any of us enough to change to social perception of "tech workers" as they call us I don't know if anything ever will. If this is the thanks we get for collectively making it possible for our President to charge into a second term using sophisticated analytic techniques encompassing social media, dynamic data storage, and lightning quick responsiveness we should all feel completely bamboozled. All of the hours we spend contributing to the development cycles of these corporations as a whole have completely worked against us. Whether we are coding, testing, debugging, troubleshooting, configuring, installing, designing or just plain providing feedback for the products we use on a day to day basis no matter how it is used every minute of every day all of us are contributing something to advancing the world around us and quite simply making it a better place. I say its time that we deserve some respect for our chosen career path in this sector. Anywhere you go in the United States this line of work has just simply become a stigma. Even on a casual level just mentioning that you work in this field causes the general public to be so utterly turned off and uninterested in anything said after the fact its just plain disrespectful. Are there any movies or television shows that portray us in an exciting or even positive light? Only when it comes to money does it suddenly seem like a worthwhile pursuit. This is the social perception we need to change: that we are all in it only for money and everyone else that gets involved in computing should too. This case reflects that perception I speak of heavily in that it was thrown out because it was money which was the main factor behind it all. Wow, all of us greedy "tech workers" should just go climb under a rock and die right? Especially, when "tech workers" like Bill Gates are out there curing diseases and doing real charitable work still the rest of us are just too low on Mazlow's hierarchy to think outside of outside of our own wallets is the perception. "Tech Workers" are some of the most selfless people in the world and generous as well so we must let it be known. Until they come up with some sort of open-source legal system where anyone can litigate free of charge I think we all know who the real golddiggers are. If things don't change then maybe anyone who wants to create anything on a computer should pay a fee or be forced to attend some sort of educational curriculum and we can all collectively be in control of it and tax them as well. That seems pretty far fetched but its time for us all to band together and make it much more feasible.
Not just a union but an actual cartel would be the solution.
The motto: Es plato o plado en su computadora
Stupid winger bullshit. The people in the class action suit take zero risk, which means if the suit is successful they literally get money for nothing. Whereas if the case is lost, the lawyers are on the hook for the entire cost of the case - which can be enormous if there are a few hundred thousand documents to parse and dozens of staffers to pay salaries for.
Don't like it, take your own damn risk and hire your own damn lawyer.
But of course no one is going to do that if the amount they've been stiffed is less than the cost of even filing in small claims court. The only solutions are class action lawsuits, or government agencies cracking the whip. But of course, the sort of useful idiots (for the corporations) that hate class action lawsuits also hate government oversight.
The system doesn't have to be like this, we can restructure the game to reward cooperative behavior between the parties using game theory. See my sight for details on a new ADR process that utilizes these insights. We're just getting started, donations and other assistance is appreciated.
http://ibmemployeelegalservices.com/
Nikolas J. Britton
Executive Director
IBM Employee Legal Services, Inc.
nbritto@ibmemployeelegalservices.com
(563) 564-3546
8760A Research Blvd #151
Austin, TX 78758-6420
FORM A REAL PROGRAMMERS UNION.
Then go aorund to every single perosn that programs and ask them to join
note what unions have done in the past for worker rights....wages and benefits.
fact is its time for a users union of rights....why not a programmers one...
I agree. We all know the best way to learn about a complicated subject like class action litigation is to read shitty novels.
What I find most odd about the denial of 'class' status in this case is that an illegal cartel arrangement to push down wages is exactly the sort of situation where it would be very difficult for any specific employee(unless they are allowed to take their case to discovery and dig up a bunch of juicy internal documents mentioning them by name) to prove any specific salary delta between the competitive and noncompetitive situations; but it should be relatively simple(by economic modeling standards) to arrive at an approximate figure for overall savings on wages by the cartel members.
They learned their lesson from the Vioxx lawsuit.
Suppose there is a 10% chance that any individual was cheated. If you just divide that evenly across the pool then everybody gets thousands of dollars. If you instead litigate everything one case at a time then there is a 90% chance that any particular plaintiff was not cheated, and therefore the juries rule against every single one of them. The result is that nobody bothers to pursue a claim, especially after a few people lose.
Class action lawsuits are probably the best remedy out there when everybody can agree that something fishy is going on, but they can't agree on exactly who did what when to who.
or a Guild
Yeah, anyone that thinks a lawyer is taking a "risk" witha Class action lawsuit is a complete and utter moron that is measured only on epic scales.
Please give me the list of lawyers that lost everything they had and are now destitute due to a failed class action lawsuit.
They only take them on if they are a "sure thing". Sounds like you are simply spewing "stupid Uberbah Bullshit"....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Honestly(while the rulings in class action cases tend to be ridiculously likely to allow offenders to pay in coupons, software, and other 'in-kind' nonsense that costs them pennies on the dollar), it would probably be better if people thought of class action suits as something more like a criminal proceeding, except handled by private sector actors based on financial incentives.
When a criminal case comes up, the first zillion comments aren't "The criminal justice system is a total scam: the prosecutor gets a salary and everything and the victim of the crime gets nothing!" because that isn't the point, the point is dealing with criminals and making committing crimes more risky and less attractive. Obviously, if the class-action system were better at getting the financial penalty distributed to the wronged parties, rather than just attorneys or imaginary-accounting-dollars paid out in product and coupons, this would be a major improvement; but even if the 'class' never got anything, a system that encourages lawsuits against entities who wrong large classes of people is a good in itself.
Sounds like you're butthurt that your winger fuckwittery was just destroyed.
Please tell me who pays for the cost of dozens of staffers, expert witnesses, and court costs if the class action lawyers lose the case. Please tell me how much of share of the pie you would want for a job where you assume all of the risk, where everyone else makes money from your efforts with zero time, effort, of money invested of their own.
Don't like it, hire your own damn lawyer and take your own damn risk.