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Anti-Poaching Lawsuit Against Apple, Google and Others Given the Green Light
An anonymous reader writes "A class action lawsuit against Apple, Google and a number of other high-profile tech companies has been given the green light by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. The lawsuit stems from anti-poaching agreements that Apple a number of tech companies entered into from 2005 through 2009. Parties to the agreement all promised not to recruit employees from one another. The companies involved include Apple, Intel, Google, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Adobe."
As an "Apple fanboy", I'm glad to see that lawsuit is given the green light. Not only against Google and Adobe but against Apple too.
...you get to see the tip of the iceberg
Oh my God! My entire world view is shattered. I have to kill myself!
Time to add anti-poaching to the California Business and Professions code to make it strictly forbidden. This keeps coming up year-after year. There needs to be a law to protect the free market for talent. California should lead the way, but it would be really nice to see it at the Federal level as well.
Far superior to any other method of preparation.
Typical class actions: Lawyers will settle for $20 million dollars for the lawyers and $3 for each person who didn't get a job.
Not to worry, as soon as this class action lawsuit is won, every employee will get a $20 coupon at the Microsoft store! What has any union ever done for anyone by comparison?
Don't get ahead of yourself my friend. This is just the start of the suit. Nothing says this suit will be successful, or that the resolution will be helpful to the employees even if it is successful.
>>even non-union employees have rights, too?
Indeed, which is why we're reading an article about how prohibitions against unionizing helped prevent anti-poaching agreements between corporations.
Ah who am I kidding, what I just typed makes about as much sense as what you typed, and is loaded with just as much bias!
Let the free market work its magic. Companies should start using employment contracts for stellar performers so that they don't have to fear them leaving for competitors, and the contract can be renegotiated every 2-3 years, if the stellar employee doesn't like the terms, they can walk when the contract expires.
I fail to see the problem here.
Company gets to get the people they want
People get paid more
People pay more tax (If the company didn't pay their employees as much, the money they save wouldn't be taxed, they're expert tax dodgers)
Anti-poaching is only one means by which corporations weaken workers. Illegal retaliatory firing for union organizing is another. The suit is about maintaining a free market in labor. Union membership is one way that individuals participate in that free market. The decline in union membership is a major cause of the decline in the income of American workers.
As documented in Robert Reich's book Super-Capitalism, the most productive and prosperous time in US history was the age (1950s-1960s) of collaboration between big government, big business, and big labor. With labor out of the picture and government oversight waning, is it any wonder that corporations are feasting on the bones of their powerless workforce?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I've been told for years that the only way employees can ever fight their employer is if a union represents them and does all the negotiations. Now you mean to tell me that even non-union employees have rights, too?
We are talking about hard to find, high demand employees here.
The suit, originally brought forth by five software engineers in 2011, alleges that the anti-poaching agreements served to lessen their employment opportunities, thereby weakening their negotiating power and ultimately affecting the salaries they were able to command.
Wait, what?
I've been told for years that the only way employees can ever fight their employer is if a union represents them and does all the negotiations. Now you mean to tell me that even non-union employees have rights, too?
That depends. If you are able to sell a unique skill - yourself - you can do that well. If you are more of a commodity, you'll be nickel and dimed. Often with a salary so low you need public support on top of it, and also forego healthcare. These could really need a union.
That said, where I live I think unions are too strong. But they are a needed balance.
wtf? in the 21st Century? This looks like a clear violation of the US Anti-Trust rules against agreeing not to compete in a market. Or agreeing to boycott suppliers. Even a wink is illegal.
I work for a similar mega-corp and we are continually drilled in the importance of Anti-Trust. Where were their lawyers?
Monopsony is far worse than monopoly because you can always decline to buy. Does anyone have any explanation beyond rank corruption?
And this lawsuit is far less effective at improving working conditions than a union would be. Your point?
Important distinction, class action lawsuits are really about punishing the offender, not about getting reparations for the victims. A strong union might have been able to do that.
The suit, originally brought forth by five software engineers in 2011, alleges that the anti-poaching agreements served to lessen their employment opportunities, thereby weakening their negotiating power and ultimately affecting the salaries they were able to command.
Wait, what?
I've been told for years that the only way employees can ever fight their employer is if a union represents them and does all the negotiations. Now you mean to tell me that even non-union employees have rights, too?
Yes, it's possible. If you have the money and the time you can even get it to court. Then it's you, and maybe a few others, against the combined experience and cash of the justice a multi billion dollar company can buy.
I know how big corps work. Just because an exec had a stupid email exchange doesn't make it real.
Here's what happens.
Exec A to Exec B: "Lets not hire each other's staff"
Exec A's lawyer to Exec A "That's stupid"
Exec B's lawyer to Exec B "That's stupid"
Messaging sent to staff - "Please attend the mandatory anti-corruption training.
The only persons that win these are the lawyers.
... is "the maintaining of prices at a certain level by agreement between competing sellers". Switch sellers to employers and prices to wages, and you've got what this agreement is, and it should be just as illegal.
If you think this shit is only for big tech companies think again. This has been going on to some extent in Detroit of all places. Agreements between the auto companies and suppliers and between suppliers. A couple of managers actually told me this was so, including another company notifying my employer of me trying to get a job there. Evidence suggests this is sometimes a transient thing - the ban has lifted where I'm at AFICT we are no longer trapped for now.
I believe there may also be an overlap here with navigation employees as these industries share a common usage and dataset but there was no transfer of employees within the geographic data silo in the same time period, just wondering.
Maybe I'm not understanding this agreement, but to me it sounds like they just agreed not to actively recruit from each other. I've never seen anything indicating that, for example, an Apple employee couldn't apply for a position at Google (and vice versa).
End of line..
From Ed response to Steve Jobs:
"Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal. [...] Palm doesn't target other companies -- we look for the best people we can find. l'd hope the same could be said about Apple's practices. However, during the last year or so, as Apple geared up to compete with Palm in the phone space, Apple hired at least 2 percent of Palm's workforce. To put it in perspective, had Palm done the same, we'd have hired 300 folks from Apple. Instead, to my knowledge, we've hired just three."
When I worked for Borland we used to joke that we were Microsoft's training site, because so many employees were either recruited away or just plain left for MS.
Even the non-compete's don't work because MS have so many types of projects they can put you on something different till your non-compete expires.
The fact that this phenomenon has been given the term "poaching" by these corporations shows exactly what they think of you, the tech worker.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's the exact opposite of what "free market" means. Since Wealth of Nations at least.
That's not the reason for decline in income. The reason for decline in income is lack of jobs because of all of the cheaper off-shore labor and increased the supply of workers in the US. Wage laws, regulations, and an environment generally unfriendly towards manufacturing ultimately drove any industry that doesn't HAVE to operate in the US OUT of the US to places that were happy to have the jobs at all.
If you had all of those jobs back and a thriving manufacturing industry again, the supply of workers would be much thinner, unemployment would be virtual non-existent unless by choice and because of that the wages / compensation would increase in order to attract and retain people. All we've done in the US is drive away a lot of jobs. There's plenty of places in the US where income levels are just fine and those are the areas where there is demand.
You create demand, the income levels will take care of themselves.
The Boeing thing has been especially interesting. As they've started things up in SC, Union workers have come down from Seattle trying to get people to organize to try to convince people that they aren't making enough. The general response they're getting is that most people are just happy to have a job...which is a point that a lot of people tend to forget when they start talking about wanting "more" vs wanting "anything".
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
If this doesn't end up like a typical class action suite Apple and the other big players could end up paying out Billions in damages, probably making it the most expensive lawsuit ever and making an ever so small dent in the mountains of cash they've managed to pile up.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That blows the "Dont be Evil" thing right out of the water.
In this particular poaching agreement you're looking at compression of 5-10% at most. So it's fairly modest. I suspect salaries were not the key reason for the agreement. This is more about disruption of timelines because of overheads like ramp up, training and recruiting. There's also a bit of ego about loosing a resource to a direct competitor. You get things like Balmer breaking stuff when he finds out it's Google poaching talent.
All that being said, the core reason these companies went with anti-poaching agreements was because non-compete agreements have very narrow and limited scope in California.
It's also worth noting that the DOJ hammered all of these companies years ago. It was settled and the practice stopped. In fact the only reason the class action suit could go forward was because of the discovery from the DOJ. For the most part employees would never have the means to get access to the smoking gun in civil court.
"... that Apple a number of tech companies ..."
should be:
"... that Apple and a number of tech companies ..."
The law of unintended consequences would indicate that this could be exploited if corporations collude to use such a law to keep downward pressure on employee compensation. If none of your employer's competitors will hire you because of anti-poaching laws, then your employer has no motivation to treat you well because they know you have no place else to go unless you completely change careers, and that would have it's own downward pressure on compensation.
Anti-poaching laws, if they exist, sound to me like government interference meant to reduce worker salaries by artificially limiting competition for workers. Or is government interference only bad when it protects individuals from large companies?
If the unions were still strong, they could've blocked the offshoring of workers by calling a company-wide strike in the US. That would've been effective while most of the talent and production was local. Corp-Exec bonuses are hard to justify when your sales are the shits because the corp wasn't producing anything for an extended period.
Now that all the jobs are disseminated to 3rd/4th world areas without any worker protection, the power is gone and won't be coming back.
The 50s and 60s need to be erased from memory concerning policy decisions, because the prosperity at that time is heavily biased by the fact that Europe and Japan were destroyed, and the United States was the only shop in town.
Does this mean that the boards of these organizations will get prosecuted for membership of a criminal organization? Will all profits (including the ones made abroad) be ceased? After all, this is large scale fixing of prices (for labor) by large, evidently criminal organizations. If the Mafia bosses go to jail for stuff like this and all their money taken, why not these companies?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The reason for decline in income is lack of jobs because of all of the cheaper off-shore labor and increased the supply of workers in the US.
Maybe, but before all that offshoring we couldn't buy a blender the cost of 2 cheeseburgers like we can now. Really, what's more important, the economy and all that nonsense, or being able to get dirt cheap stuff made out of plastic!
or is someone cooking eggs? I'm still confused after reading the article.
While we're at it, let's make it illegal to murder someone in_the_morning. Oh wait, California already did that I bet.
Half of the companies involved have already paid up. With the most recent ruling, the judge is saying the others will probably be held liable too. As the Palm CEO said, this is already illegal and has been for along time. We don't need more laws, a few million pages is enough.
Oddly, it's the opposite going the other way in some states. Employees are REQUIRED to collude and stick by that union collusion even if they don't want to.
> The suit is about maintaining a free market in labor.
> Union membership is one way that individuals participate in that free market.
Lol. Did you just say that collusion, enforced by the government, is "free market"? Unions, organized, enforceable collusion, are exactly the opposite of free market.
A free market means I can hire your teenage son at $20 / hour to change lightbulbs, if you want to do that job at that price. Unions mean I better contract that job out, because I'm only allowed to hire electricians at $65 + $40 in benefits for anything related to anything electrical.
The illegal behavior these companies for busted for, the collusion, is PRECISELY what unions do. Anti-competive collusion is the PURPOSE of a union.
Free Market bitches.
Who the fuck are you to tell companies who they should and shouldn't hire?
The market will take care of itself, and the Google and Apple employees will jump ship for start-ups and companies that are actually innovating, while they the big boys will hire people who come from innovative environments. So this shit is actually good for the economy and job market.
just kill them all and make the world a simpler happier place
There's no such thing as "the 4th world". It's something you just made up. For the record: 1st world: USA and its allies. 2nd world: USSR and its satellites. Doesn't exist anymore, it's an obsolete term. 3rd world: everyone else.
Unions were the reason jobs left offshore in the first place. Unions only care about the interests of union bosses - to pretend that they represent workers is laughable.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I think we would... you know, if Palm were still in business due to Ed Colligan being capable of making sound business decisions.
While that might work initially, other businesses see that and make decisions to never get involved because of it. There is no situation short of bad working conditions where unions have any actual benefit long term. In the short term, people might be able to extract higher wages but in the long term they'll both kill the business and drive others away.
There is a reason that almost all new manufacturing in the US is located in the south east and it's not because all of those businesses thought union heavy environments were a great place to take their businesses.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
And when they grant powers which create huge overhead, we force the judge to devote his or her life to the solution. This way, there will be responsibility with the authority to fix problems before they move on.
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.