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Plaintiff In Tech Hiring Suit Asks Judge To Reject Settlement
An anonymous reader writes with news that Michael Devine, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit accusing tech firms including Apple and Google of conspiring to keep salaries low, has asked the court to reject a $324 million settlement. "Apple has more than $150 billion in the bank, eclipsing the combined cash reserves of Israel and Britain. Google, Intel and Adobe have a total of about $80 billion stored up for a rainy day. Against such tremendous cash hoards, $324 million is chump change. But that is what the four technology companies have agreed to pay to settle a class action brought by their own employees. The suit, which was on track to go to trial in San Jose, Calif., at the end of May, promised weeks if not months of damaging revelations about how Silicon Valley executives conspired to suppress wages and limit competition. Details of the settlement are still under wraps. 'The class wants a chance at real justice,' he wrote. 'We want our day in court.' He noted that the settlement amount was about one-tenth of the estimated $3 billion lost in compensation by the 64,000 class members. In a successful trial, antitrust laws would triple that sum. 'As an analogy,' Mr. Devine wrote, 'if a shoplifter is caught on video stealing a $400 iPad from the Apple Store, would a fair and just resolution be for the shoplifter to pay Apple $40, keep the iPad, and walk away with no record or admission of wrongdoing? Of course not.' 'If the other class members join me in opposition, I believe we will be successful in convincing the court to give us our due process,' Mr. Devine said in an interview on Sunday. He has set up a website, Tech Worker Justice, and is looking for legal representation. Any challenge will take many months. The other three class representatives could not be reached for comment over the weekend."
you dont join class actions. Everyone should know by now that the only people who get rich in class actions are the lawyers. If you believe you have been wronged, bring a suit yourself
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
An iPad for 40$? Sign me up!
Time for a union that is only way to get the power to the workers!
That never turns out badly.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
They have those cash reserves, sure. Until the tax man comes looking for it...
After the Lawyers take their 40% that leaves about $3100 per class member. Incredible.
Obvious, no?
Mr. Devine said he told his lawyers that he found the settlement inadequate as it was being negotiated, but they ignored him. Lawyers in the case declined to comment on Sunday. ...
As a class representative, he is eligible for an incentive award for the time and effort he put into the case. His lawyers have asked the court to approve a $20,000 payment for each representative from settlements reached last year against three other defendants in the suit — Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit. A similar payment might be forthcoming from the settlement with Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe. Even if the case went to trial and the plaintiffs got the full $9 billion, he would not get much more.
RTFA, the reward is about 1/10 of the damage done, insulting and hardly a deterrent.
Cheap storage VM.
Time for a union that is only way to get the power to the workers!
Careful the all powerful think tank of bullshit will smacktard you with some verbal backwash. Think of the children and puppies!!
Really as much as the libertarian crowd hates unions here, this is the kind of thing they were created to stop- worker exploitation and malfeasance by those who own the means of production.
Unions have pros and cons. You don't get one without the other. Careful analysis should be done before assuming that unionization would be a net gain.
Which text editor....is the official text editor of this union?
I will not be associated with beeping VI users.
Emacs is my favorite operating system, even if the text editor is a bit on the weak side.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
considering that those 64000 employees were a direct contributor to the cash horde that these companies now hold.
how can a company have that much money without the employees who made it happen?
i would say that they're entitled to a larger chunk.
consider also that the amount lost by your average employee in this case was upwards to 150,000 - 200,000 dollars over a 4-5 year period. (yes, they really were keeping salaries that deflated) scale that up and you'll easily see why this $324m number is a gross miscarriage of justice.
assuming that attorneys don't eat all the settlement money, this is what, like $6,000 bucks per person in the class?
Your
It depends on whether there are punitive damages in the award. The purpose of punitive damages is to punish and prevent the behavior from happening again in the future. Thus, in making the award, one can certainly consider whether the damages are 'chump change' or not to the companies involved.
On the flip side of the coin, because punitive damages might result in an unfair windfall for the plaintiffs -- e.g., should someone get a million bucks if (s)he was only harmed by $50,000? -- the court has the power to direct that portion of the excess money go to charities or to a trust fund or something similar.
Time for a union that is only way to get the power to the workers!
Apparently you've never worked for a union. You just pass your power on to the union, whose best interest is the union, not you. I'm not against organized labor, but unions in this country are usually even worse than they corporations they are supposed to protect you against.
I've worked for 3 different union shops in my time and they were all the same. Got seniority? You can't get fired... ever. People would come in drunk and the UAW would protect them. We had teams of people that sat reading books at a picnic table all day just in case someone went home sick, they were making $25/hr to do that. I also worked for AT&T. At one point I had a customer having a problem with a particular database. It was outside my normal functions but they were dead in the water and the department that was supposed to handle it wasn't returning their calls. I fixed it, got commended by management. A month later I had a union grievance filed against me for doing the work someone else should have done. They actually tried to fine me. Luckily I got a new job before they could complete the case and I just told them to stuff it when they decided against me.
This is all anecdotal personal experience so take it with a grain of salt. Maybe I just had bad luck. But I'm done with unions.
The damages paid in the settlement are 1/30 as large as they should be. The amount of money the companies have simply indicates that they would be able to pay the full amount, and that it doesn't make sense to settle for less. (You'd accept a settlement for less than you're owed, if that's all the money the defendant had).
he reward should be based on the damage done not the size of the defendants bank account.
No, I think in an illegal action like this (and yes, it is very much illegal), the amount should serve as a disincentive to engage in illegal behaviour. If it's limited to only the amoun they make, then the worst case is they are no worse off than if they broke the law. Basically that gives them an incentive to break the law since there are no negative consequences.
Also, they broke the law to the tune of £3e9, to $3e8 as a settlement is pathetic.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Oppps we stole $3B from our workers, our bad! Here is $324 Million, we good right?
(fine as in punishment not as in splendid. But it's fine too)
If you are found guilty (or if you settle, don't think you get off cheaply), you're not fined a fixed sum. You're fined a part (or even multiple) of your annual income. That can be quite substantial in case of corporations. Which is also the reason for the insane fines you hear about when some corporation gets slammed by the EU or a state around here again.
Personally, I consider it a good system. Nobody can simply ignore the law because fines are a pittance to them. A year's income is a year's income, and losing that HURTS. Whether you make 4 or 7 digits (or in case of a corporation, 10+).
The nice side effect is that this also means we have more people paying fines rather than sitting in some prison because they can't. Fines put money in the state treasury. People in jail cost money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A punishment should hurt. If the penalty for breaking the law is a pittance, why bother upholding the law?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, usually the real winners are the lawyers. $3B or $324M: most of it will go to the lawyers.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Time for a union that is only way to get the power to the workers!
bah. the heyday of unions was back when people were literally being worked to death. i make really good money. I have a really safe job environment. I get more vacation than i know what to do with. Honestly, I've only ever worked one weekend that wasn't my choice. I was able to quit that job on a whim and get a better one.
Other than that, the worst parts of my career are the times when i feel like i have to work with a technology that isn't my favorite technology. I'm not about to start paying dues to some shady organization for the promise that i'll never have to touch VB or the Facebook api again.
Unions means the smart programmer and the average programmer get almost the same salary. Do you want that?
When you get to keep 90% of your ill gotten gains in a settlement, I think it behaves everybody to sit up and say what the fuck!
Well, as large as they hypothetically could(?) be if it went to trial and the plaintiffs won and the judge decided to stick it to the defendants. Not every trial does or should result in the maximum verdict.
It also makes sense to settle as a risk management strategy. Defendants settle to avoid the risk of a guilty verdict* that will cost more, and plaintiffs settle to avoid the risk of a not guilty verdict that will at best get them nothing and at worst sic them with legal bills.
* I don't know if civil trials technically use the "guilty"/"not guilty" terms; probably they do not.
The real winners will be future employee's if the award is large enough to have a real deterrence effect. Which is the point of a class action, not to let companies get away with lots of small injustices. It is, in fact, the principle of the matter that these companies be made to answer for their actions.
So... because Apple has a lot of cash on hand they should have to pay more in damages?
Because the settlement apparently doesn't make the plaintiffs whole and Apple has the cash to make them whole. If Apple wrongfully received work for which they did not pay then Apple has committed a crime and those workers should be entitled to compensation for the entirety of the value of work performed. If you work any amount of time for an employer they cannot decide not to pay you for time worked. They cannot withhold pay except in very rare circumstances which almost certainly do not apply here.
The reward should be based on the damage done not the size of the defendants bank account.
This settlement is apparently for far less than the damage done meaning some of the cash in the defendant's bank account is wrongfully obtained.
I worked in IT at Ford in a non-union building and got in trouble for moving the overhead bin in my cubicle a level higher on the pegs so my 22 inch CRT (in 2010) Monitor would fit underneath it.
Apparently they have union guys come in to move the desks..... We were told to log a ticket and wait many weeks while not having a monitor on my desk. Just sit there and earn what was at the time $70,000 billed hourly until someone fixes it and gets a working computer setup at the desk.
They were happy to pay me $35/hr to sit and read printed manuals because their own issued computer wouldn't fit inside their own issued desk.
Don't miss that gig :)
I maybe missing something but the agreements were about stopping one company from cold-calling employees of another company with the purpose of hiring them not about how they couldn't hire people from each other of the employees reached out to the other companies first. Also these are corporations that will do anything to the competition to get an edge and what better way than to hirer away their talent with inflated salaries as an incentive. Who's to say how long they'd survive at the other company after leaving where they came from being surrounded by other talented people.
Punitive damages are something that is awarded by a jury - this isn't going to a jury, it's a settlement.
So in this case, the person is in a class action suit. His frustration is that the lawyers who effectively control the thing from the plaintiff perspective have a significant conflict of interest and his voice is likely to go unanswered. The lawyers want the easier money which will be a large amount for them and a moderate amount for the members of the class. Most of the class would be happy to get a moderate amount and fully expect that they were just screwed. He would rather go through the effort to get his day in court and risk the guaranteed money to get back at the defendants more effectively.
In a union, he again consigns his particular fate to leadership that is just as likely to pay little attention to his particular grievances for the sake of their own welfare and sometimes the welfare of the whole.
What he really wants is to not to consign his particular fate to class action lawyers and a union in this case would resemble the same situation. Whether you believe a union overall is a good or bad idea, in this particular scenario I wouldn't expect a significantly better situation for the person's particular sensibilities in this scenario.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Actually, most of it won't go to the lawyers. However, there are only a few lawyers vs thousands involved in the Class.So the lawyers make 1/3 and split it among a very limited few. The rest (2/3) gets spread among thousands and thousands. So lawyers make a lot, and everyone else makes a little.
The fix for this is lawyers representing a Class in a lawsuit, are limited to the some multiple of the average member of the Class. Last class action I was a part of, I got some $2.34. Imagine a lawyer only able to gain 10K times that amount MAX. It would change how they proceed in representing the Class. I don't mind Lawyers making money at all. However, when they make Millions while I get $2.34 is really not a good representation of Justice.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I want to know when I'm going to get mine from the early 90s when HP actually announced to employees that they were colluding with other tech employers to fix pay and benefits. I went to job interviews at other companies at the time and the story was always the same- no increase in pay and reset vacation time back to 10 days per year.
Time to LAWYRUP !
It is wearying to see people shout for unions as if theyre a panacea or dont have scores of their own issues. Anyone remember the thuggish behavior of the Verizon unions a few summers back, where they were pissed that their non-profitable department was not making as much as other, profitable departments? To prove their point, they went around slicing through fiber lines... one might almost dismiss the "verizon reps say" as just a smear campaign, except for all of the tech support calls I got during that time from verizon business customers whose internet mysteriously went out right as the strike was underway. Thats not suspicious, at all....
Unions did great things in the past, but these days they seem to be champions of vastly inflated salaries and fighting merit-based pay whenever possible. No way, no how, no thanks, Im doing quite fine in my merit-based, capitalist run industry. I've had quite enough of "workers unite" talk for a lifetime.
This was a settlement. There are not punitive damages in a settlement.
Apparently he hasnt even looked at history. Unions have a pretty shady history, whether private or public sector. Things like fighting merit based pay, encouraging striking union members to sabotage company resources, ostracising / attacking workers who are against unionization... it stinks of protectionism and mafia-like behavior.
This is a case of criminal conspiracy that rippled through the economy. Where billionaires conspired to keep middle class wages lower because they wanted to make even more money for themselves. Not just people in these companies were affected. The illegally restrained salaries at these companies set the bar for millions of people in the industry. They need to pony up a few Billion more at least.
These class action lawsuits themselves seem like blatant ways of companies limiting their own liability... they simply conspire with some lawyers to sue themselves, settle for pennies on the dollar and just a few individuals that proactively reject the settlement can ever get the full amount they are due. And the incentive of those so called lawyers who are getting a percentage commission is to settle for whatever makes them millionaires, not whatever will make people they don't really represent whole.
I think in the future that the courts should require proactive agreement in writing from at least a majority of the class for the settlement to be accepted. And then let anyone that doesn't proactively accept the settlement sue later on. The opt-out system that we have now doesn't result in equitable resolutions.
I get more vacation than i know what to do with.
You obviously aren't inventive enough. Personally, if I had 365 days of vacation a year I'd still want more (that one day in February every few years would suck).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
went around slicing through fiber lines
Talk about a new take on the whole 'broken glass' fallacy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
so because some unions do it all unions are bad?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I had a grievance filed against me for "not doing enough work" because my desk was...wait for it...too clean.
Yes, I had to go through 5 weeks of 3-5 FTEs spending several hours each week discussing the fact that someone claimed I was not busy enough because my desk was neat and tidy.
Want to know it was resolved? They came and looked at my desk and then we went to their office and looked at their desk (a fucking disaster area) and then it was dropped.
FTEs = Me, my union rep, the individual filing the grievance, their union rep, and an arbitrator. For 5 fucking weeks.
Unions are horseshit.
It's nice to see all the anti-union rhetoric. Now find me a police dept that doesn't have a union. Interesting...
Cheap storage VM.
What DOESN'T have pros and cons? Even vaccinations hurt a bit for a split second, and they're the closest thing to "something that is completely devoid of cons" that I can think of.
With unions, I think history has shown they are good medicine for when the labor force is being abused by employers with government's blessing.
Unfortunately, with both vaccinations and unions, after living with them for too long, people forget what life was like before they were around, and only notice the cons, and then listen to assholes telling them they're nothing but trouble. We then have to do a mini cycle where the old problems come back a little before people realize there are plenty of good reasons for unions or vaccines.
RTFA, the reward is about 1/10 of the damage done, insulting and hardly a deterrent.
1/10th of the claimed damage. It would be actual damage if each single one of those 64,000 class members actually would have found a different job paying $50,000 more.
Your math doesn't even flow from the *plaintiff's* claims of the value of the suit and the number of class-members. It's off by roughly a factor of 3-4. Your (made up) numbers would put the plaintiff's claim at 9.6 - 12.8 billion, not the plaintiff's estimate of 3 billion. The plaintiff's claim puts the yearly value at an average of $46,875 over the course of that 4-5 year period ($9,300 - $11,700 per year).
That's a number the plaintiffs would have to prove, and provide supporting evidence of, in court.
captcha: illusion
While you do raise some valid issues, this isn't really one of them:
We had teams of people that sat reading books at a picnic table all day just in case someone went home sick, they were making $25/hr to do that.
I assume you are talking about in an assembly line setting, right? Well, what else would you do? If someone does go home sick and you have nobody to replace them, then you've got 2 choices really:
1) shut down the line completely
2) slow the line to a fraction of it's pace so that the sick worker's job can be shared by the adjacent workers.
Both options are extremely expensive. It's cheaper to just pay some people to be on standby.
It would make it harder to form a class action, as the lawyers would not want it, of course republicans would love it
class action is not about making you whole, it is about punishing the entity that did it. If you do not punish them enough they will keep doing it, the lawyer fees are unfortunately the way to get the needed people on board.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I don't know about you, but I like to fix things, not avoid them because I think they are broken.
Cheap storage VM.
EVERYONE who works in tech has been damaged by this conspiracy. I don't work at Google or Apple, but my compensation is very much influenced by what my employer believes I could reasonably expect to earn if I went to Google.
There is no such thing as "merit based pay".
Your so-called solution does break more things than it fixes. Who wants a second unreasonable boss?
You seem to forget that Google officially raised their employees salary by 10% after Facebook refused to be part of the illegal agreement. In practice because how the bonus was restructured for some people it was probably an effective increase of up to 25% on the final w2. Considering that most 'tech' at google makes more than $100k per year (staff level engineers make more than $250k per year). multiply that by the number of years this has been going on, and the claimed damage does not seem inflated anymore.
Yes, that is how business is done, get a union and watch as you suck the company into the ground.
Or file a lawsuit and do the same......... What could go wrong? Besides losing your job...........
That the smart programmer and the average programmer are only about 10% different in code output - I'd say 10% difference in salary is 'almost' the same salary so if both take home pays would be higher (because unions typically increase everyones take home) why the hell are you complaining? Because you aren't lording over your coworker?
Hrmmmm.
It should actually be the other way: If the damage done was about $3 billion, then instead of a settlement of $324 million, it should be more along the lines of $6 billion or even $9 billion. If you are looking for something in case law to determine a settlement, look at RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act). It never fails to amaze me how corporations and the political right will cry bloody murder if the government even takes a gaze at the 'free market' which is trumped to be pristine and perfect, yet the same corporations will take each and every opportunity to skew that same market in their favour and will do using every illegal means possible. "The Free Market is pristine!" Except if the government imposes something on businesses. Or if those same businesses skew the market in their favour by violating the Sherman Act (if they can get away with it), or by violating the Consumer Protection Act, or by colluding to keep wages down by restricting movement of employees.
Libertarians are not against unions. Show me one source that shows that libertarians are against the right of people to associate or not associate however they wish. They are against laws that force employers to recognize unions and bargain with them as well as the laws that force employees to become paying union members even if they don't want to.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
There are plenty of smart programmers out there earning far below what average/poor programmers get in other jobs. Besides, who is to say all programmers will work in the same job classifications? You may find software developer I, software developer II, etc... This also gives a career path in the company (something that doesn't exist in most places)
Sure, some will do a better job than others, but because of the peter principle both programmers will be working for someone in the company who doesn't understand what either of them do, but desperately want to reduce their salaries or positions so they can get a bonus. At least in a union there's a layer of protection for the worker before hitting the pavement when they're thrown off the bus.
The reason unions exist is to increase the bargaining power of workers. IT workers on the whole have very little bargaining power and that is why they are very easy to outsource. Sure, there are some extremely talented people out there who can command whatever pay they want. There are also professional athletes in sports who can demand high pay, and even then most belong to an association.
For every star worker there are tens of thousands of rank and file workers who do a great job but are scared to death about losing their job and being outsourced. It's time to face facts and leave the survival mode thinking and hyper-competition between workers behind. While complaining about their neighbours portion size, everyone is burning out due to high stress, long hours, and being seen as a disposable asset. They stopped caring about you as a worker long ago, if they ever did.
I'm not talking about fixing the situation by creating a union. I'm talking about finding a way to fix unions so they work. It's not impossible.
Cheap storage VM.
Silicon Valley tech employees are being abused by their employers!? Wow, what a ridiculous failure of perspective. I think those Google Bus protesters are pathetic scum, but reading comments like this make me feel just a little bit of sympathy with their view.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
The lesson of unions is that you can't put things on autopilot. You have to be involved with the union and make sure it is actually representing your interests. You have to notice and care when the senior members are ripping you off. It happens with unions, small gov, big gov, corporations, sole proprietorship.
Power corrupts, be on guard.
Cheap storage VM.
Yeah, alot of these complaints are people who are jealous of someone else benefiting from a management decision, not a set in stone union policy. Yes, the union makes sure the policy is applied fairly, but it's the numbskull managers who implemented it.
Cheap storage VM.
And your point is?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Come to Florida. Non Union police forces are all over the place. Florida is a right to work state. (meaning also, right to fire, for any reason or no reason at all.) For the most part it seems to work well though.
Unions would still suck. Why should we be stuck in the industrial age with unions etc. when the age of the internet is already here?
A website, regulated by the govt, that allows employees to negotiate wages from various potential employers would be a better solution. The negotiation would be based on experience, performance, skill, programmer supply/demand etc.
There should also be consideration for passing company profits to employees if their work is above that required by a common employee. Apple has close to $1 trillion. Yet their employees are paid roughly the same as a no name company's average programmer. Is this fair? Are only business and marketing folks responsible for Apple's spectacular financial success?
Question: Why does the US legal system suck?
Answer: Because we are willing to settle.
>so because some unions do it all unions are bad?
No. Because nearly all unions do it, nearly all unions are bad.
If plaintiffs are probably right, they are probably owed about $100 million, and the defendant offers to pay the $100 million, accepting that offer is obviously good. It's good for the plaintiffs, who get paid sooner and know that the approved settlement won't be appealed. It's good for the tax payer, who doesn't have to spend tax money on a long court battle. It's good for the defendant, who can get it over with and move on. The only people who prefer a trial are lawyers who get paid more to try a case .
Given the cost of trial, in time, money, and uncertainty, it's still a good deal if the defendant offers $90 million.
Most of the time, there are two sides to the story. Patent trolls remind us that plaintiffs are often wrong. Often, they should get nothing. So consider a class action in which the plaintiffs feel they are owed $100 million, and they have a 50/50 chance of winning. In that case, a $50 million settlement is a good thing. The plaintiffs get almost as much as they might hope for after trial expenses, the defendant, also gets it over with without trial expenses, and doesn't risk a $100 million loss.
In the instant case, this particular settlement is too low if and only if the plaintiffs had at least a 20% chance of not only winning, but winning as much as they asked for. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but in general settlements save everyone money, time, risk, and stress.
... but it's probably just enough to pay off the lawyers. Going to trial would put them out a lot more in time and expenses and the payoff would be proportionately lower due to haveing to split the take with the plaintiffs.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Actually, most of it won't go to the lawyers. However, there are only a few lawyers vs thousands involved in the Class.So the lawyers make 1/3 and split it among a very limited few. The rest (2/3) gets spread among thousands and thousands. So lawyers make a lot, and everyone else makes a little.
The fix for this is lawyers representing a Class in a lawsuit, are limited to the some multiple of the average member of the Class. Last class action I was a part of, I got some $2.34. Imagine a lawyer only able to gain 10K times that amount MAX. It would change how they proceed in representing the Class. I don't mind Lawyers making money at all. However, when they make Millions while I get $2.34 is really not a good representation of Justice.
You do realize that if the lawyers had forgone their complete amount you would have made $3.34 instead of $2.34. I agree that if the lawyers made cost (hours, fees, etc.) + 10% of the settlement then they would work just a tad harder to get a larger amount. But, unfortunately, it's lawyers who write the laws and who get to profit from them. It's one of the reasons why we have such a complicated legal system in the first place.
One day someone will write an artificial intelligence engine that can process all of our laws and rules. Of course, it will promptly go insane.....
If someone stole an iPad, they'd by charged with theft and Apple would see nothing. They may well sue afterwards but the thief would be perfectly entitled to make any offer and Apple may well accept it rather than waste their resources on something relatively trivial.
What we really need is for the DoJ to get involved and actually press charges for deliberate wrongdoing, and for the court to decide the punishment.
> I got some $2.34. Imagine a lawyer only able to gain 10K times that amount MAX. It would change how they proceed in representing the Class.
Yes, it would change things. The change would be that no law firm would ever represent a class. The firm's expenses are about $100,000. Would YOU spend $200,000 in hopes of making $10? Me neither.
A lot of unions do this stuff. Never heard of the teamsters?
It tends to be remarkable when Unions ARENT thuggish, honestly.
Im pretty obviously against those too. Im not clear what point you were trying to make, or if that was supposed to contradict me.
Im of the opinion that ALL public sector unions should be illegal / disbanded, honestly-- it ignores the primary reason for a union in the first place.
http://www.lp.org/platform section 2.7
"...an employer should have the right to recognize or refuse to recognize a union. We oppose government interference in bargaining, such as compulsory arbitration or imposing an obligation to bargain."
Sorry for being an anonymous coward, but necessary for me in this instance.
As an individual who is currently party to this lawsuit, the settlement is a joke. Hell, I believe a $3 billion settlement would be a joke. $9 billion might be getting into the ballpark.
Why? The "damages" are based on employee salary. The settlement allocation is based on how much each class member made in SALARY ONLY during the 5 year period, then allocating the $324 million based on that. The problem is, salary is NOT how most engineers at these companies are compensated - they are primarily paid in company stock.
In 2004, I was given a $100k/yr job with stock that was worth about $2m over four years. During 2005 - 2010, I received a mere 2.9% pay raise for the entire 5 years along with about $20k in additional stock. Since the "pay fixing" scheme came to light, I have received pay raises of 70% in 4 years, along with stock valued at over $3 million. So putting aside your immediate desire to hate me for the money I'm being paid - consider that in 2004 I was worth being paid millions by these companies, then after 2011 I was worth being paid millions more - yet between 2005 and 2010 I was worth only a tiny 2.9% in total pay raises? My point, this wage fixing scheme wasn't about fixing salary, it was about stock options - possibly upwards of $64 billion to these companies. $324 million is laughable.
I thought some might appreciate an "insider" viewpoint.
Not for lazy people there isnt.
But there could be for those motivated to work.
It obviously wouldnt fit all jobs, but it could fit quite a few.
Quota's, targets, objectives, can be used to determine the workers merit for a given time period.
So they are just against effective unions then.
and how does that contradict what was said? Libertarians are against laws that force (i.e. compel) employers to negotiate with unions.
Your reference does NOT say that employees should not be able to form a union.
IOW, you have proven the above point. If that was your intention, excellent job.
Silicon Valley tech employees are being abused by their employers!?
That's what this entire case is about.
Wow, what a ridiculous failure of perspective.
That others are abused more doesn't mean that anyone should gladly take any amount abuse that is dealt to them. You may not have sympathy for them, but they don't need your sympathy to try to make things right.
This is "divide and rule" in action. The little people fighting among themselves because some are slightly less little than others.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Does not matter if most do it, a lot do it, or just some do it, over generalization is still over generalization.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Which is the paradox of it. Those motivated to work are already motivated to work and hence merit based pay is not necessary. What is necessary is not hiring lazy people--that's a management issue.
So, the management who couldn't adequately fire the lazy people are now expected to create quotes, targets, objectives, etc and then monitor the employees adequately to base pay? And what ends up happening? Before long, people who are good workers who want more pay work harder. Before long, the department is overbudget from all the hard workers. So, either (1) there's a quota limit and the hard workers can effectively work shorter days (rarely happens) or (2) the actual pay is scaled down to match the actual worth of the excess production (encouraging overproduction and effectively punishing the hardest workers). Yep, that's a great system.
See, in theory you're right that a merit based system would work. The problem is that management is shitty at actually measuring merit and often uses other metrics--meetings, friendships, etc--to determine pay. Just like how they promote people to better, higher-paying positions based on the same basis. After all, you want to keep the good, hard workers in the job they're productive in. Promoting them to something else and you decrease the aggregate productivity of the pool. Hence, the least competent people are the people you most want to promote, regardless of whether you use merit based pay or not.
There are much more egregious cases though. For example, a million plaintiffs owed $100 each. Company settles for 6 million to the lawyers and 1 million $10 off coupons on the same crappy product that caused the suit.
If you dig deep enough in most of those absurdist situations, you'll find that for each perverse rule the union demands, there is a corresponding attempt by management to screw the union that resulted in that rule.
In the database situation, perhaps the point was to make the management get what they pay for and someone was dragging their feet in hiring enough people at the agreed rate of pay.
The guys on standby were probably the result of a chronically understaffed department in the past.
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that freedom is bad.
The libertarian platform says that if workers want to have a union, they can. If they don't like particular union, they can form another, or choose no union at all. That's called freedom. The opposing view is that workers should be forced to a work for a union, with union bosses controlling what workers can do. Aka socialist totalitarianism.
The other part is how employers interact with unions. The libertarian viewpoint is tthat workers should be able to get multiple offers from different companies and choose the best offer based on salary, benefits, location, etc. The alternative view is that some group or third party should dictate (and seize part of) workers' pay. If you think that's right, you side with Apple in this case - they had an organized group helping to control wages.
Libertarians believe (party platform) that if some guy who runs a union suggests that you work for $40K and have four weeks of vacation, you have the right to say "no thanks, I'll take this offer for $53K and two weeks". Companies can hire all of
their workers in one shot with the union. IF a lot of workers don't like the union deal, the company can instead negotiate with each employee based on their priorities - offering one higher pay, and telling another it's okay for them to take off an hour early twice a week to pick up their kid. Under the libertarian idea, employers can negotiate based on each employees needs ONLY if lots of workers don't like the union - enough to staff the entire company with non-union workers. (The union workers won't show up to a split workplace). What that guarantees is that needed workers always have at least two competing offers to choose from - the union contract and the non-union employer. The employer and the union both have to offer the workers the best deal they can, because the worker can choose either.
To be against that is to be against allowing workers to choose between competing offers. Apple and the other companies did that, they eliminated competing offers. I guess you think that's a great thing, because that's precisely what mandatory unions do.
If you are working for a paycheck, guess what? You are working class.
I'll go you one better. You find me a police union who doesn't endorse and/or finance the council candidate who offers to give them the most taxpayer money and widest latitude on infringing citizen's rights. So it goes like this:
The police union takes a cut of the (taxpayer financed) police wages.
The union uses that money to get help get a mayor and city council member elected.
The mayor and council now owe the union a favor.
The mayor and council supposedly represent you, the citizen, in negotiations vs the union who got them elected. (Rotfl).
The mayor and council give their union financiers what they ask for.
Three years later
The head of the police union stops by the mayor's office to discuss two things:
a) The police want less strict rules about "use of force"
b) The union wants to talk about whether or not they'll support the mayor in the upcoming election.
And you think police unions are examples of a really great idea?
Unions wouldn't have come into existence if corporations weren't abusing their workers.
And no, many people can't just quit and find a better job, this trial explains why they can't.
My solution was to remove the shelf and stick it in a corner and log a ticket saying that my shelf had "fallen off" and please re-install it safely.
I can't defend the practice, but it usually takes a thug to take on another thug. Unions don't tend to pop up where workers are being treated with due respect. They pop up where employers are acting like thugs.
those in the tech industry need to join him http://techworkerjustice.wordpress.com/
mikeclassrep@outlook.com
we are all affected by this wagefixing crap! these corporations should not be able to push us around anymore and exploit us!
Its about time a union got formed for our profession anyway. Who is with me on this?
>it stinks of protectionism and mafia-like behavior.
And the behavior of Apple and Google doesn't?
Silicon Valley wages aren't great, relative to cost of living. Working at some other tech hub will earn you just slightly less money, but the dramatically lower cost of living will make it seem like several times higher pay than Silicon Valley firms. Silicon Valley is more myth than reality, these days. Those who jumped into the Googles and Facebooks before they got big, with stock options in-lieu of salary, which ended-up being work millions of dollars several years later, are the exceptions to the rule. That's not something you should expect to see, today. In fact, most people looking for a similar gold-rush would be better off moving to the oil fields of North Dakota, today.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Even six weeks in minimum security would be okay.
$324M means nothing to these corporations.
I heard somewhere that traffic violations, etc. in Norway is fined per income the violator is having. Person earning less will pay less fine, but a millionaire will pay much more. Not saying lot of money should reach plaintiffs, they should get appropriate amount, but Govt. should tax these offenders enough. Such a condition should be applied when big filthy rich corpn. does illegal things like these.
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that freedom is bad.
Or if you have an understanding of history, the market, resources, and human psychology.
With $150 billion in the bank, Apple can suck it up, wait it out, sue, issue propaganda, or do whatever else is necessary to break a union. There are enough people out there desperate for a job that Apple will win. The average plebeian, fresh out of college with $100k in student loans, or later on in life with a mortgage payment and a family to support, does not have that luxury.
An ant isn't concerned with freedom when the boot is coming down on its head. Even a colony of well-organized fire ants can't handle somebody that can afford an exterminator and a week's vacation while their house is under a tent.
Take a look at the pre-union activities of the Apple/Google contemporaries of the 19th century: Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. They won. Every time. Until the government stepped in.
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that freedom is bad.
Your comment makes sense only if you think that what Apple, Google, etc. did was right, and that workers have a right to be exploited. Can we stop trading ridiculous hyperbole now?
The reality is that if every worker has complete freedom to do whatever they want at all times then a union would never have any leverage. Workers would undercut each other on pay (not just make a benefit swap as in your example). If there ever were any meager benefits extracted by the unions then the free-riders would reduce the unions power (leverage and lobbying ability) to near zero. Why pay dues and follow union rules if you get the benefits without having to?
It's fine to say that in a pure libertarian world unions don't need to exist because workers will, through their individual choices, get what they're worth. However, you are delusional if you think that workers in all industries and professions would be as well off without the protection of unions and laws which protect how employers can deal with unions. Can you provide any examples anywhere in the world where this has worked?
So somewhere between your absolute stalinist style totalitarianism and the libertarian free-for-all is the reasonable compromise that we've come to in the last 150 years, and one that changes as time moves on and the world changes.
Now since you seem to be opposed to what Apple and Google have done here (and you errantly lambaste me for supporting it) can you tell where in your libertarian ideals that they have done anything wrong? Under pure libertarianism they have every right to decide to act together and not poach each other's employees.
I don't wish jail on anyone, but this was likely a felony and there is a clear paper trail of evidence. Either someone needs to go to jail or the companies need to pay fines that are big enough to actually make it not worthwhile to do again. Otherwise the lesson learned here is that only suckers play by the rules and that even if you get caught the punishment will be far outweighed by your illicit gains. And the harm was not just to a few top engineers, but an entire industry which has had its wages depressed illegally by this conspiracy.
Sure so far this has probably caused more than a few headaches and some fretting. I'd guess that there has been more than one weekend trip to a warm tropical place on a private jet in order to try to relax all that worry away.... so perhaps they have suffered enough over all this. :P
Back in the day, unions were established to stop worker exploitation. One of the most visible of the exploited workers was the coal mine workers. They were forced to work in unsafe conditions and endure very long work hours. All so that greedy business owners could make more money off the backs of their employees.
Fast forward to today and it's a similar condition for today's tech workers. Many of them are forced to work very long hours without any overtime pay. All so that greedy business owners could make more money off the backs of their employees.
Although unions have become somewhat of a dirty word these days I can see the case for having unions for tech workers.
A shame that facts can't garner a vote, but the hyperbolic vitrol supporting falsehood can.
No, it's just expediency. The cops and DA's are not organized or smart enough to do it for intimidation or abuse. Never attribute to malice that which can be atributed to sheer laziness.
You seem to be overlooking the difference between being forced to work a union contract that is far worse than what you can get on the free market vs being able to choose to join a union. The libertarian platform isn't that unions are bad. It's that choice is good - people should be able to join unions if they want to.
> If there ever were any meager benefits extracted by the unions then the free-riders would reduce the unions power (leverage and lobbying ability) to near zero. Why pay dues and follow union rules if you get the benefits without having to?
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Consider the union makes a deal with Ford for $X (minus $Y paid to the union). GM doesn't strike a deal with the union, so they offer $Z. Workers then have a choice of either the union deal Ford or the non-union offer at GM. You can get all the union benefits and drawbacks at Ford, if that's what you want. The alternative you propose is that all workers must take the union deal. You work for $X-Z or you don't work at all.
> Can you provide any example anywhere in the world where this has worked?
In the US, programmers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, nurses, web designers, fashion designers, clothing designers, and architects are not unionized. Assembly line workers, chicken pluckers, and school teachers are unionized. Guess which group gets the best salaries?
School teachers are a great example. Their union gets someone with a masters degree $50,000, then takes a chunk of that back in tribute. I don't know about you, but if I had a masters degree and someone guaranteed that I wasn't allowed to make more than $50K, I wouldn't be paying them for the great deal they got me
My point was that many of the right to work laws explicitly allow police unions, because they are traditionally more conservative. I didn't realize they all don't have that provision.
Cheap storage VM.
There is no smoking gun because "no hire agreements are not per se illegal". You have to prove the agreement resulted in a "naked restraint of trade". The likelyhood of this case being won in court was nil. Courts have rarely if ever made such findings without evidence that employees where prevented from leaving or initiating contact with other companies. All we have here is a no poach agreement which has no chance of being viewed as restraint of trade. All in all, this is just a nuisance suit that was cheaper to settle then defend and that caused so amount poor publicity.
Unfortunately, the majority of Americans have been taught to think otherwise - as if being working class is somehow shameful. It has been noted before that Americans think of themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" - which is true, but the implications reach further than one would expect.
Absolutely there are some bad settlements, just as there are bad verdicts when cases go to trial. Sometimes the court shouldn't approve a settlement, and sometimes that don't approve them.
> a million plaintiffs owed $100 each
We should keep in mind that it's actually one lawyer who CLAIMS that a million people are owed $100 each.
There's another side of the story most of the time.
I've been part of the plaintiff class in three or four cases. In one case, I didn't feel that I was owed anything.
In most cases, I didn't feel that I received much. So good and bad there.
Ronald Reagan's first election was leader of a labor union (Screen Actors Guild).
Gosh, screen actors and professional athletes get paid well. I sure it must their union...er...I'm sorry Mr. Reagan, I meant the "free market".
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Everyone doesn't work in a job like yours, my friend. The people working in slaughterhouses are often maimed and, being non-union, have almost no recourse (Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation). Fast food workers and Walmark-style retail workers endure wage theft. These aren't smart programmers; they're the people who didn't complete high school for whatever reason - from incapacity to circumstance. Unions don't exist to help the people who can help themselves; they exist to help the relatively powerless.
The complaint of the lawsuit is that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe agreed not to recruit employees away from each other.
With a few exceptions, not doing something is perfectly legal. Will it now be mandatory that every company's HR department must to conduct campaigns to recruit employees away from other employers? And if so, how aggressive must those campaigns be to avoid your label of "criminal conspiracy"?
When I'm at the Toyota dealer looking over a sales contract that I'm about to sign, you don't see a Honda salesman walk in and try to recruit me away from the Toyota dealer. Is that proof of a criminal conspiracy? No, it's fine. Because prior to my decision to buy a Toyota, I had plenty of opportunity to check out what Honda was offering. And each day after I buy a Toyota, I have an opportunity to trade it for a Honda.
These companies all decided, for a time, that not recruiting employees away from each other was in their best interest. (Any company could have dropped out of the agreement at any time, and then become subject to having its own employees recruited away from it.) Believe it or not, acting in its own best interest is, in and of itself, not a bad thing for a company to do. Once upon a time it would never have been called a criminal conspiracy.
Despite the agreement to not recruit employees away from each other, an Apple employee was still free to apply for a job at Google, and vice versa. That avenue to seek better pay or working conditions was never closed off. It's just that employees had to take the initiative, instead of HR departments.
Steve Jobs may not have tactful when reminding Sergey Brin that Google would become subject to aggressive recruitment if Google initiated recruitment of Apple employees. But there are lots of examples of Jobs' lack of tact, and none of them were "criminal conspiracies."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Fast forward to today and it's a similar condition for today's tech workers.
Tech workers in the US live in company housing, are paid in company script that is only good in the company store, work in physically dangerous conditions where cave-ins and fires and asphyxiation are a very real possibility, and are left with a long-term disease that seriously shortens life and affect quality of life? Are you really sure tech workers are working in similar conditions than coal miners were?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Agreed. It's part of why things are so thoroughly tilted in favor of the super rich.
There is room to question the amount, but surely in a defective product suit, a coupon for a small discount on an identically defective product is inadequate (and very probably profitable for the defendant if anyone uses it).
I was also annoyed by the possible $3B win vs. $324M settlement, so I contacted one of the class action plaintiff's lawyers. He called back and I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with him. Among other things, he pointed out the defendants in the case (Apple et. al) have monster legal budgets, and the case will very likely (after many years) be fought all the way to the Supreme court. The current SCOTUS is more corporate than citizen friendly (witness Citizens United, etc.) and a win there is -not- assured. It is sickening to see the lawyers get a big payday, while you (the class member engineers you) are getting a new TV instead of a new car. But the TV is a sure deal, the car most likely is not.
My wife works for a school district and their union sucks big Willy Wonka dick. Truly the union is looking only for its own best self interest. On another note, I worked at a corporation in California for a couple of years. When their NetWare server had issues, I suggested that they swap the NIC with another one that was sitting on the shelf above the server. They had to wait for a union guy to come in and swap the card. Seriously? Any half-brained twat could have replaced the card. I had done it only a thousand times before I was in the position to suggest so. But everyone was scared of the union and they wouldn't swap the card.
The issue with unions in this country is that they get in the way of doing things. But the downside without the unions is that corporations will fuck you with a steel rod if you're not part of a union.
Let me fix that for myself. Corporations will fuck you with a still rod whether you're in a union or not. Given the choice between union and non-union, I choose union, because at least some poor soul is getting some dough instead of the corporation.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
I was guessing as to what your point may be. Thanks for clarifying.
One gentleman who had been president of a labor union pointed out that for government employees, unions have the conflict of interest I outlined. Not that he was anti-union - he had recently been the president of a union when he made the point that they don't work with unions negotiating with elected officials (whom they will elect).
After being union president, he was president of the United States and was defining the modern republican party when Reagan expressed the conflict of interest inherent in government unions. It seems that many conservatives today still follow Reagan's logic in seeing that conflict of interest as a reason that government employees, especially should not be unionized. The other reason articulated by president Reagan and conservatives since then as that police and other essential public services can't be going on strike, leaving the public with no police protection. If Apple employees walk off the job, that creates a problem for Apple and their employees to work out. It doesn't affect the general public much. If police (or air traffic controllers) walk off the job, that puts lives at risk, so it shouldn't be allowed.
For those two reasons, many conservatives, including myself, think that police are one of the few professions who shouldn't have unions (and therefore strikes). Workers in private industry should be _allowed_ to unionize but not _forced_ to do so.
Unions have done some good for some people at some time in history. On that we agree. You jump from that to wanting to force people to work your union contracts against their will. On that we disagree.
> Ford is paying $40 and the union dues are $5. How much is GM going to pay their non unionized workers? You seem to believe that it will be more than $40 because GM doesn't have to pay for union extracted protection
If Ford is offering $40 ($35) under the union contract, no sane person would turn that down to work at GM instead, modulo if GM treats their workers better, etc.
> workers typically do not understand (and thus do not appreciate) the union
Your arrogance is insulting. That's the elitist liberal snobbery that turns people off so much. You tell people that they are too stupid to make their own decisions, so you should make their choices for them. You know so much more about their lives than they do about their own, right? It's stomach-turning. Just like when you say black people are too stupid to score high enough on the SAT to get into college, so you should give them extra points for being a stupid negro. It's just disgusting.
Speaking of cherry-picking, government schools are over twice as likely to require grade school teachers to have a masters degree or PhD compared to private schools, who are allowed to hire based on actual competency. Yeah, people with master's and PhDs required by union contract make more than people with a bachelor's degree.(Minus their student loan payments).
I missed a few words while doing cut-and-paste to organize my reply:
If Ford is offering $40 ($35) under the union contract, no sane person would turn that down to work at GM for significantly less instead, modulo if GM treats their workers better, etc. Therefore, GM must offer at least as much as the union deal offers. Of course, "as much" might mean something employees value more than an extra fifty cents, like on-site child care provided, where parents can walk over and have lunch with their children. My (non-union) job has different scheduling options and several workers have started tele-commuting, working from home, even from a different state. The union contract can't treat people as individuals, recognizing that Sally needs to leave early every Friday to pick up her kid and Ray needs time to move around assisting other employees rather than being stuck at his station all day. Instead, the union contract has to treat employees as interchangeable things, rather than as individual people . For this reason, the non-union shop can very well attract the best workers with a truly better offer - better for the employee and better for the employer. The employer benefits from Ray lending a hand wherever needed, and expediting work through the relationships he builds, but the union contract has to pigeonhole him into a specific task all day, every day. Can't have him lend a hand in any role he's not assigned to - he's not on that payscale. These are the facts of my daily working life.
Indeed. Much like the "penalty" for Microsoft's numerous antitrust violations - they had to allow schools to teach kids to use Microsoft products. Of course, they called it "donate software licenses to schools".
There are bad settlements, and bad settlements shouldn't be allowed. Most settlements (and criminal plea bargains) are better for everyone than going to trial - the outcome is something that both parties agree is somewhat reasonable, unlike a trial where it's all-or-nothing, so it's guaranteed to be totally unfair, from one viewpoint.
Guest worker programs are the new company town. Between the restrictiveness of transferring between employers, the conditions usually encountered in "body-shop" agencies, and the nearly non-existent naturalization rate, you have all the same conditions experienced in the old company town.
No wonder employers will do everything to ensure that no citizen can take that spot, since it is the most business-friendly type of employment.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The problem you outline, elected officials negotiating with unions, is not an inherent problem. It is only one of the symptoms of the problems created by our two party system. Even that doesn't make the problem insurmountable, but is exacerbated by the money=speech provisions that have been placed into our current system.
Once again, unions are a convenient scape goat, one that safer to attack in today's climate.
Cheap storage VM.
First the emails indicate that they knew it was probably illegal. This is absolutely a conspiracy to restrain trade. Employees have a right to sell their services to other companies. By conspiring not to approach these employees to hire them, this was a criminal conspiracy. It is no different than a company with a supplier agreeing with another company that they won't approach that supplier about buying their services. Both situations clearly violate the law. You can't enter into agreements with another company to split up the market. It is a felony.
>> You jump from that to wanting to force people to work your union contracts against their will. On that we disagree.
> Please quote where I have said anything of the kind.
Coldsam wrote:
If every worker had the freedom to do whatever they want, a union would never have any leverage
Also:
They are against laws that force employers to recognize unions and bargain with them as well as the laws that FORCE EMPLOYEES TO BECOME PAYING UNION MEMBERS EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T WANT TO.
You replied:
So they are just against effective unions then
I guess you've realized that's ridiculous (and fascist) to "force employees to become paying union members when they don't want to", so you've changed your mind. Awesome. That's the great benefit of discussion, we get to examine our ideas, consider alternative viewpoints, and refine our own thinking. Yay for effective discussion. A moment ago you said forcing people to be under the control of a union is the only way for unions to do anything.
I've enjoyed discussing this with you.
A moment ago you said you don't want to force workers into unions against their will. That was shortly after you said it is necessary to "force employees to become paying union members even when they don't want to". If you didn't change your mind, are you just confused? Maybe you're not sure what you think? That would be cool, that's called being open-minded.
> exacerbated by the money=speech provisions that have been placed into our current system.
Unfortunately, the alternative is far, far worse. In Citizens United, it was decided that you are allowed to make a documentary, or otherwise let your voice be heard beyond the room you are in - and that doing so means spending some money to make the documentary.
The other option would be to decide that you may NOT spend any money while exercising your free speech rights. You may not buy yellow ribbon, you may not make Xerox copies of your essay, and you may not rent a microphone and speakers to make a speech. If you decide that free speech rights disappear the moment you spend any money, you've decided that Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech is illegal without prior government approval. (As political speech that required money to put on, virtually all of MLK's speeches would have been illegal under the principles the FEC put forth in CU). I don't think we want to go there.
Allowing MLK to give a speech also allows Michael Moore and the head of UAW to give speeches or make videos. It's not perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than criminalizing the act of making a political video.
Breaking the link between money and speech doesn't deny anyone anything. It just allows us to enact regulations.
Cheap storage VM.
I have been wondering for several decades what was going on with Apple because they just do not seem to want to pay fair money for engineers. They know we want our resumes to say we worked for Apple. The thing that gets me the most is that the cost of living in Cupertino and surrounding areas it VERY high, the average commute being 45+ minutes the last time I looked. When I interviewed there years ago, I was astounded at what they wanted to pay. Since about 1999, someone has been draining the money out of the software engineering profession. I just don't see how they expect to get or keep the top talent with a policy like that.
The LP wishes to allow the employer to no recognize a union but they leave in place the implicit requirement of a union to recognize the employer. This would enshrine in law an asymmetrical power structure where labor must recognize capital organization but capital may ignore labor organization. They would "permit" unions in only the most useless of ways by by negating any of their possible functions. If negotiations do not go capital's way they may merely stop recognizing the labor organization that it was negotiating with; labor would possess no such ability.