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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."
Time for a union that is only way to get the power to the workers!
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.
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.
And even then, if you did, they would make it a condition of the settlement that you not talk about it, that they admit no wrong, and you'd get a couple thousand dollers while they continued their conspiracy ( making it more difficult for everyone to negotiate for higher saleries).
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.
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 :)
because .....
lawyers want it that way, because fast settlements are easy money for the lawyers (who often dont care which side they're on or even if they win or lose, so long as they cash in), and they pad the pocketbooks of those who make, enforce, and interpret the laws.
and
big rich businesses and their fat-cat owners and executives want it that way, because fast settlements with (almost always) no admittance of guilt, no airing of dirty laundry, and for a mere fraction of what a suit is for, is what they want, and they stuff those same pockets.
and as far as 'desired result' for the "government's interests" that's easy.. settlement means less workload for the 'system'.. they dont really care about outcomes, or fairness... because those who allow it to happen, happen to be the ones with the aforementioned pockets... fewer tax dollars supporting the 'system' means more available to give back to the rich via loopholes and credits, or to fund their favorite pork projects.
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.
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.
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.
Because a class action helps solve the "steal from many" problem.
What's worse for society - someone that steals $1M from someone else? Or something that steals $1 from 1M people? The outcome is the same, yet there is willingness to pursue the former and ignore the latter.
Think of it this way - your phone bill goes up $5 per month. Over say, 5M subscribers, that's $25M more revenue per month, or a whopping $300M per year. Well, slightly less... see...
And you know what? 99.99% of the people won't do a single thing - the cost to write in and complain is more than $5. For those that do the effort, well, just cut them a $5 cheque, or more likely a $5 credit off next month's bill. At which point they'll continue the $5 charge, repeating again.
Oh, but you can't cancel, because you're in a contract. And some abusive ones really allow for "reasonable increase in costs".
And now the CEO gets a new yacht and a big fat bonus. Next year they'll ding everyone $2 more.
The class-action was formed for this abuse - because in the end, most people cannot be bothered to claim back what really amounts to a couple hundred bucks in the end by going to court, and it's easy to buy off those that do by writing them a cheque for the refund after making it as difficult as possible.
Everyone should know by now that the only people who get rich in ANY LEGAL actions are the lawyers.
Fixed that for you.
As someone who has intimate knowledge of a very successful law office (1000+/hour rates) the number of times they almost went bankrupt or had to risk their personal financial well being to support the business is crazy. The number of hours and stress level is beyond anything I'd consider putting myself through. At the end of the day they pull in a lot of money but one big case going sour at the wrong time can ruin them.
One problem most people don't consider is that these companies have dozens or hundreds of employees (depending on the size), most of them have to be skilled because one mistake can derail a case; that means high pay for quality employees. Then you've got the issue of delays - many cases can drag on for years, even decades, which means you've got to plan your revenue stream based on best guess of if/when cases will pay out and how much they'll bring in. All the while the employees, rent, taxes, loans, etc. need to be paid - a medium sized firm (15-30 people) can have up to $250,000 in costs/month. That's a lot of money for such an uncertain business model.
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.
Settlements for civil law and plea bargaining for criminal law. Both for the sole purpose of expediency, and intimidation and abuse.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”