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Apple, Google Agree To Settle Lawsuit Alleging Hiring Conspiracy
An anonymous reader writes "A group of tech companies including Google and Apple have agreed to settle an antitrust lawsuit over no-hire agreements in Silicon Valley. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. From the article: 'Tech workers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Inc and Adobe Systems Inc in 2011, alleging they conspired to refrain from soliciting one another's employees in order to avert a salary war. Trial had been scheduled to begin at the end of May on behalf of roughly 64,000 workers in the class.'"
Just, um, incidentally, all those checks are uniquely serialized and anyone who cashes one really isn't showing themselves to be a team player or a good fit with company culture, now are they?
It should read: "Google and Apple agree to settle after seeing mountain of evidence against them."
Likewise their statements will read something like: "We have agreed to settle this lawsuit in the hopes that it will bring closure to this situation and while we did nothing wrong we will amend our policies to treat all workers fairly. That is until we get caught again."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Let me guess: the settlement specifically states that they admit to no fault right?
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Is it possible to keep secret a deal with 64000 persons? That should leak.
We admit no wrongdoing and promise not to get caught again.
The lawers took most of the cash.
The rest of you got coupons for apple and google products.
And you can never ever tell anyone you were involved in this at all.
Yay justice!
...if they knew my search history.
Oh wait...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
TFA says:
roughly 64,000 workers in the class
If the universe has any sense of humor, it'll turn out to be exactly 65536 workers in the class.
If ten people can sit around a table and decide what to pay me, I should be able to have 10 people sit around a table and decide what I will work for.
You know corporations rig the game. Do you still see unions in a bad light now?
"In one email exchange after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee, Schmidt told Jobs that the recruiter would be fired, court documents show. Jobs then forwarded Schmidt's note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face."
The story behind the smiley face is that Steve Jobs now knew exactly what disgruntled ex-recruiter he could hire to solicit Google employees on behalf of Apple.
Did anyone opt out of the class action? If so, they can still sue.
I worked at HP in the early 90s and they used to announce to us that their HR people had sat down with HR people from many other large engineering employers (including Intel, Cisco, etc.) in the Bay Area and throughout the US to define job descriptions and pay and benefits packages. I thought it was bullshit, but most of fellow employees didn't think much of it because the next part of the announcement was the 3% annual pay raise everyone was going to get.
If there are any lawyers out there looking to prepare a similar suit, let me know!
The only answer to antitrust is simple - break those companies apart and KEEP THEM APART.
No settlement should be allowed.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Let's both admit that in all our lawsuits, neither of us had done anything other than license Taipei rights to a third party" I have been following Digitimes for years, this is not about "rounded corners", it's about Taiwanese touchscreen tech.
Gently reply
The bigger outrage of all this, is how these companies get off with slap on the wrist fines, or a slap on the hand with a "now don't you do this again" from government. The EU seems to be inept at doing anything, maybe taking lessons from their US leaders.
Goes without saying, if the little guy/small business did this they would be cutting plea deals and either be imprison, or into bankruptcy. And these big tech companies aren't paying taxes either but they can pretty much buy off rules and regulations.
64K tech people have jobs, so they are not as desperate as Apple and Google are to not get their dirty laundry out. And since both companies have more cash than US gov't, obviously this was never going to trial.
Interestingly, Apple posted quarterly financials today ... so how much this has cost them we won't know for 90 days... and even then it will probably be well hidden.
I know it is getting comical to ask, but shouldn't the CEO's that are still alive face jail time? Same for the heads of HR that went along with this crap?
You can apply for your rightful portion of the settlement, which works out to be 17 dollars and 35 cents. That's if you want your name, address, and contact information socked away in a database indexed and publicly searchable until human civilization ends.
Wonder if this covers contractors too. We were asked to tell Intel management if anyone ever called us on the intel lines.
This is the invisible hand truly at work once again !
The free market is one-armed: it is missing the hand that gives.
A guy I know used to work for a deli, he used to deliver sandwiches to their office.
Never any ham, apparently.
The exact number was 65535 because they were using an old version of Excel and could only store that many rows
Poaching happens all the time and has been happening - I'm amazed that there are that many people who weren't poached. I've worked for two of the companies involved and was poached from one when I went to the other and they paid damn well for me. If truth be told, the number of people who ~were~ poached from competitors (and are right now) probably dwarfs 64000. And that is a Good Thing.
Non-poaching agreements are nothing more than ways to get your competitors to trust you in order for you to fuck them that much harder. Anyone who actually sticks to them is a goddamned idiot. You get them to think youre not poaching from them, then you poach like hell.
With non-poaching agreements, you lose far more in future income from new talent than you gain in the short term. Why pay someone to reinvent the wheel when you can just hire the guy who built it somewhere else?
I also would have told Jobs..."Oh sure, we wont poach from you guys" and then I would have proceeded to poach the fuck out of the arrogant prick. Its not like anyone who had to deal with the motherfucker needed much incentive to fuck him - he wanted to be able to treat people how he wanted without having to worry about paying for it by them leaving.
The "class" is a bit bigger than the direct set of 64,000 affected. For most jobs, "reasonable and customary" was taken as the California wage which was then discounted for the folks NOT working in California. Working on the east coast, you would of course receive less than the folks in Silly Valley. And because your starting salary was artificially depressed, then you would of course receive a substantially lower sum over the span of your career. The one time I was given an actual raise of more than a few percent, I was moved out of my "salary band" and received no further raises. And folks wonder why efforts to promote STEM may fizzle out.
If I was a CEO of a Tech company, I would be calling up all the other CEOs and saying, "Let's do this again". Why? $2.7 billion reason why.
Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe conspired to hold down salaries of their employees, saving their respective companies $3 billion. When they got caught, they paid a $300million settlement and walked away. Net saving $2.7 billion. No admission of guilt, no one goes to jail, no one gets fired.
There is no deterrence for them to not do it again. No penalty, just a slap on the wrist. The penalty has to be at least the damage down in real terms. When you conspire to do something illegal and they only penalty is that you make $2.7 more in profit, you will never, never stop this behavior.
MNCs are Pyramid/Ponzi scandals in Globalization
Casteism
Ever since I saw this case (originally on Pando Daily) I have been wondering why people in the industry aren't more upset about this.
I used to work in software, engineering, programming, etc. but transitioned to another field. Despite that I find this hiring conspiracy thing almost unbelievable and I'm not even in the industry anymore! When I ask my friends who still do software, hey mostly just shrug their shoulders and don't seem bothered by it. I am asking slashdot to help me understand this reaction.
It seems to me that if an employee was stealing from the company, most people would be shocked and expect the employee to be fired immediately. But here you have executives stealing from the employees and nobody seems to care. I don't understand how these executives can ever say anything to the employees of the company and be taken seriously anymore. Let's say an executive (or any higher up who was involved in this) asks an engineer to stay late to fix a problem to help out the company. How can that engineer not think "This guy stole from me and now he wants me to be a team player?! WTF?!
Now I can totally understand people in the industry saying "This is total BS! These guys are bastards. But I have to pretend that it's no big deal so I don't face retaliation at work." That kind of thing I can understand, but the general reaction I see is more ambivalence not suppressed outrage.
So what should people do if they are bothered by this? Well I think the first step is to speak out. I think the second step would be to join or donate to organizations that support ethical actions (EFF, FSF, etc.), and maybe the third step would be to form a union.
I'm not so much advocating the above as trying to understand why I don't see anyone else advocating it. I humbly await slashdot's opinion.
Thanks