Silicon Valley Workers May Pursue Salary-Fixing Lawsuit

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Silicon Valley Workers May Pursue Salary-Fixing Lawsuit

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday January 15, 2014 @04:29AM from the next-thing-they'll-be-letting-them-unionize dept.

First time accepted submitter amartha writes with news that a lawsuit alleging Silicon Valley companies of colluding to lower wages is going forward as a class action. From the article: "Roughly 60,000 Silicon Valley workers won clearance to pursue a lawsuit accusing Apple Inc, Google Inc, and others of conspiring to drive down pay by not poaching each other's staff, after a federal appeals court refused to let the defendants appeal a class certification order."

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IANAL, but... by jddeluxe · 2014-01-15 04:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

It might be difficult to prove the INTENT of the "no poaching" agreement was to suppress wages. Unless any of the defendants were stoopid enough to refer to such in emails or other discoverable documentation.
1. Re:IANAL, but... by dkleinsc · 2014-01-15 04:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  They have a demonstrably anti-competitive agreement between purchasers of a service to make each seller only able to deal with one of the purchasers, creating a monopsony. Textbook macro basically argues that the effect of a monopsony is that the only buyer in the market now has basically complete control of the terms of any agreement with the seller, because the seller's only option is to not sell his product.
  Another way of describing this: Imagine you work for Amazon. Without these agreements, you have these options:
  1. Accept a 3% raise to continue working at Amazon.
  2. Accept a 25% raise to go work for Google.
  3. Not work at all and be unemployed or at least accept a massive wage cut.
  With these agreements your options now are:
  1. Accept a 3% raise to continue working at Amazon.
  2. Not work at all and be unemployed or at least accept a massive wage cut.
  This is inherent in these kind of agreements. There's no need to prove intent.
  
  --
  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
2. Re:IANAL, but... by ranton · 2014-01-15 05:22 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It might be difficult to prove the INTENT of the "no poaching" agreement was to suppress wages. Unless any of the defendants were stoopid enough to refer to such in emails or other discoverable documentation.
  What other purpose could "no poaching" agreements possibly have? Their only purpose is so a company does not have to pay a salary high enough and/or create a work environment good enough to keep the employee from leaving.
  
  --
  -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Collusion, in tech? by mjr167 · 2014-01-15 04:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

No... the lawyers will get rich, the workers will get fired, and the company will continue business as usual.
Re:Collusion, in tech? by Moryath · 2014-01-15 04:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

Eventually.
After years of appeals, attempts to bury the employees in mounds of paperwork and bleed them dry on legal fees.
Followed by appeals over whether or not the defendants, if they lose, have to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees too...
Meanwhile, The H1-B Scam is alive and well, just two stories down from this one on the front page...
Post the judgement on Google busses by bob_super · 2014-01-15 04:54 · Score: 4, Funny

I'm sure the people protesting in SF will be glad to hear that the Googlers are, in fact, underpaid.
The times, they are a-changing. by jtownatpunk.net · 2014-01-15 05:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

Not. Looks like things haven't changed in generations.
My grandpa moved from the east coast to the west coast back in the 50s because of non-poaching agreements in the aircraft industry.
but it didn't remove the option. by YesIAmAScript · 2014-01-15 05:12 · Score: 5, Informative

The agreement was not to reach out and poach others' workers. It wasn't to refuse to hire them. You still had the option of getting a 25% raise to go to Google, all you have to do is apply to Google.
The agreement didn't reduce the options available to people, it just made it so the engineer had to take the first step, the recruiter wouldn't call you to entice you.

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http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I worked for HP about 15 years ago. by mark_reh · 2014-01-15 06:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

Every year the HR people would make presentations to us about how they got together with HR people from other big engineering companies in the valley and decided upon job descriptions and pay and benefits packages, and by the way decided that the COL raise this year would be X%.
My coworkers, most of whom were oblivious to the big picture, would cheer at the annual pay raise and I would grumble about the salary fixing that they were proudly presenting.
I wonder if I can get in on the class-action suit...
Re:Collusion, in tech? by drsmithy · 2014-01-15 08:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

Remember, total corporate profits in the US are less than 10% of total wages in the US. "Evil big corporations" are certainly paying as little as they can get away with, but there's not much slack there in the first place. It's not like, on average, we could be paid 20% more if our collective bosses was only more generous - that money just doesn't exist (and small companies are on far thinner margins here - making payroll is a monthly uncertainly for most).
Why must salary increases for workers be sourced from existing profits ? Why could they not be sourced by reducing the ridiculous pay packages of upper and executive management ?
Re:Collusion, in tech? by drsmithy · 2014-01-15 08:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

The point of unions is not to drive the "evil corporations" out of business. That would be counter-productive and stupid.
The point of unions is to put employees on an equal footing to employers when it comes to negotiations on working conditions and pay.
Generally, they achieve this goal well.