Judge Rejects $324.5 Million Settlement For Tech Workers, Argues For More

An anonymous reader writes with this news from Reuters: A U.S. district judge on Friday ruled that the $324.5 million settlement negotiated by Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe with the tech workers who brought an antitrust lawsuit against them was too low. The judge cited the settlement amount of a similar lawsuit brought against Disney and Intuit last year which resulted in plaintiffs obtaining proportionally more for lost wages. And yet, according to the judge, the current plaintiffs have "much more leverage". She cited evidence clearly showing Apple's Steve Jobs strong-arming the other companies in the suit into agreeing to a no-employee-poaching agreement, and in one instance, of Google failing to rope in Facebook into a similar agreement which resulted in a 10% increase of all Google employee salaries. In other words, clear evidence that the no-poaching agreement effectively suppressed the salaries of these companies' tech workers. Another hearing is scheduled for September 10.

Comments

In other words...

[thieh]

New talents will be nigh impossible to develop from scratch because it's the same guys who shifts between the big firms. Is it really so hard to develop talent who isn't currently working for those firms?

Re:In other words...

[nolife]

Devolving talent and skills requires time. There is always new people coming in but they do not come in immediately to the higher level positions. They start lower and possibly work their way up. If your top performers are leaving soon after they reach that "top performer" level, you will have less top performers. So, you recognize their benefit to your company and provide better benefits to try to keep keep them happy or you illegally collude with your competition and peers to not offer benefits greater then you or flat out refuse to hire them away from each other at any cost. These companies chose the later method.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you stop using the word "talent" to refer to employees? It is retarded.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

The behavior also destroys the profession and hurts companies.

If top performers would be able to name their price and working conditions, e.g. 160k\year and free vending machine and caffeine budget for example, then they work longer hours, they work harder, and they're more motivated to do a good job.

Bump them down to 120k\year and few benefits, and tell them "work hard or else", well of course they're going to insert shitballs into the code and do other things because they don't give a crap.

Take a sysadmin making $50k\year working 60hr weeks; if they have zero faith in the market, they might just decide not to spend any money on college or further certifications, and might spend their afternoons at work dancing with greek strippers.

So at the end of the day, people name their motivations, and putting an artificial cap on the market instead of allowing it to reach the cap on its own is absurd.

Re: In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, it's "resources", or, if you are a hockey player, "material".

And yet

[Spy Handler]

how could these companies say with a straight face that they only want more H1B visa employees due to lack worker shortage and not because they're trying to find cheaper labor?

Re:And yet

[thieh]

Their straight answer is that the industry needs more workers or otherwise they will be forced to break such agreements and push up the wages which make the other firm to go on a head hunt and jack up the wages further.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

They could say that with a straight face because the two ideas ("worker shortage" and "cheaper labor") are two sides of the same coin. If there are more workers in a market, the average (or median) salary of an arbitrary engineer goes down. By definition, a shortage exists in any market when the price exceeds what buyers would like to pay. This is essentially why the "natural rate" of unemployment is not zero: There are workers who are not willing to accept the jobs that companies are willing to offer them.

As a trivial case, imagine two companies trying to hire one very specialized worker: A canny worker will be able to get the greatest salary that either company is willing to pay. If there are suddenly two workers available, that leverage goes away, and it is much harder for either worker to bargain up a salary.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

How horrible! Workers should be completely disposable, just like any common tool or machinery. Only the owners are truly indispensable.

Re:And yet

[roman_mir]

It's not about who is dispensable or not, companies do not exist to hire people, they exist to make products / provide services that allow the owners to make money, that's the purpose of a company. Hiring employees becomes necessary when there is more work that can be done, where the cost of hired labour is lower than the value produced by that labour. If you make labour cost too high, less of it will be bought, because the value produced by that labour may not be enough to cover the cost and to make some profit, and the whole point of business is to generate profit, otherwise it's not a business but a hobby. Hobbies have their place in life too, nothing wrong with hobbies, but hobbies can lose money, while businesses can only survive if they make money. Making money is the point and labour is just like any other tool or machinery, that's exactly what happens. Labour cost competes with capital cost, make labour cost too high and capital may win, which means automating or outsourcing the labour (capital wins in this case in terms of setting up the infrastructure necessary to outsource labour).

If everybody ran their own company and nobody wanted to work for anybody else, then you'd have the exact situation where everybody was an owner and there would be no employees, but in some situation the cost of labour would be too high, and so the price offered for labour would go up. Then some people who are making less money running their own businesses than what could be offered to them to work for other employees could shut down their businesses and go work for someone else.

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other, it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

People would turn down jobs at Google or Apple on salary grounds if there were a surplus of workers. Almost everyone seems to agree that there is a shortage (according to the usual definition in economics). This case was brought because large companies -- by all accounts -- illegally colluded to counteract that shortage, and thereby suppress their employees' wages.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably why we have something besides a company or business then.

Because it turns out, workers are actually people, and people have value that they want respected. Which is why we have governments, in order to serve the people.

But yeah, just think of how many workers you could have if you didn't have to think of the rules of the government, the taxes, the regulation, the litigation. It's almost like the government exists for some purpose, a nefarious one that interferes with business profits. Why it makes people take consideration of their value when they're no longer producing! Or not producing at all! And then it treats them equally under the law. Truly shameful.

People should just be like tools. When it no longer serves? Throw it out. Think of how much better it would be for businesses and their ability to generate profit!

Because that's all that matters. Profit. That's the Ferengi way.

What do you mean we're Klingons, not Fergengi???

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Randroid

Re:And yet

[roman_mir]

Because it turns out, workers are actually people, and people have value that they want respected. Which is why we have governments, in order to serve the people.

- so start your own company and give all the respect to anybody you want. No, what you are after is worse than any 'Ferenge' or whatever, you want oppression of individual freedoms by government, that is not authorised at all actually to regulate businesses.

Newsflash, something you may learn here: "regulating interstate commerce" does not provide a blanket permission to regulate business, it means preventing States from setting up monopolies, forbidding people from out of State to do business there. Regulating interstate commerce meant to UPHOLD the free market principles, not destroy them.

There should be no government regulations, the reason government usurped all this unauthorised power is laziness and jealousy of people who would rather see government steal from others to subsidise themselves than try and compete in the actual free market environment, providing fellow citizens with products and services they would be willing to trade for voluntarily.

Achieving business profits in free market capitalism is the most moral way to run an economy, since profits in a free market economy only come from voluntary exchange and participation rather than coercion that fascists and socialists (basically thieves and oppressors) want.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hint...I'm not interested in solving those problems through a business or company, I'm interested in solving it through a government. Because I respect that the reason a government exists is to serve the people, not to earn a profit. So we have governments.

Which protects the freedom to live, by doing such things as removing the freedom to kill. Which protects the freedom to own by taking away the freedom to take. This may, of course, get in the way of profits, but then I don't put profit over all.

Which is much better than naively pretending that somehow the "Ferengi" way is much better, yeah, I get it, you're trying to pretend you're interested in freedom, but it's a myopic view that only wants to look in a very biased and particular direction, yet ignores the costs.

Why just look at your focus on "regulating interstate commerce" when the subject of discussion isn't on the particulars of a framework of government, but still on the principles. Not that I concur your interpretation is correct, and it's certainly not supported in the actual jurisprudence, but even if I were to believe that, I'd simply assert that the US Constitution be changed instead. It does need some reformation, it has a lot of flaws that should be fixed.

See we had a long period where the federal government did just what you wanted. Several even. It didn't work out well. And no, you can't place all of the blame on the state governments, as the issue weren't even limited to those instances where segregation was compelled by force of law.

But hey, keep complaining about the moderation, that's just you opposing the free market system here. I guess you really don't like it so much.

Re:And yet

[roman_mir]

the reason a government exists is to serve the people, not to earn a profit

- wrong. The reason that governments exist is our inertia, laziness and jealousy. Originally governments were all nobility with the power in hand to kill you.

Nobility running amok vs. people wanting to live their lives freer from that type of government is what gave rise to Constitutional monarchy, where nobility could not steal from people and kill people at will, there was finally some laws against that type of abuse.

American Republic was supposed to become a better form of government not by making a bigger government, but by protecting more of the FREEDOMS of individuals, this is the only reason to reform governments - better governance in our progression means freer individuals, which is what allowed USA to become biggest manufacturer and creditor nation on the planet before 1908 (*before politicians figured out how to use all of the wealth generated by that system to start a class warfare that eventually destroyed the most productive economy since the dawn of men*).

Goal of a company is to make profits.

Goal of a politician is to stay in power.

Making profits in a free market capitalist system means providing products and services to the willing market participants.

Staying in power for politicians means building a bigger and bigger army around himself, so that to dominate against other politicians in that version of the Game of Thrones and it has nothing to do with serving people whatsoever. Staying in power means building an army and the people are the ones that are feeding that army through stolen work and through reduced standard of living.

Profits in a free market capitalist society are the most moral goal that can be, since it does not use any coercion, it uses desire of other participants in that economy to trade with the company.

As to slavery, thievery, murder all of those concepts are government concepts first and foremost and in a free market economy people don't need governments to deal with any of it, private courts and private security is enough to deal with aberrations.

Re:And yet

[vux984]

The solution to H1B visa employees is to simply have combination of a wage requirement plus an annual tariff on H1B visa employees such that the total cost of the H1B visa employee is higher than the median employee costs.

If the companies still want H1B visa employees then there is a genuine shortage, and they'll pay what it takes to get employees.

If suddenly they don't want piles H1B visas and start hiring locally, well.. that tells us there wasn't really a shortage.

Given H1B employees tend to get paid less though, I expect that's the main reason they are desirable.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you make labour cost too high, less of it will be bought

This is meaningless and really the reason I'm modding you down. You have tried to equate rising wages to labor cost to anti-business. The rest of the post is either statement of facts (redundant as it does not lend to an argument) or statements of opinion about orthogonal concerns (offtopic). Specifically, your only point, that I can see, was to characterize a business running at a loss as a hobby and then what that means to you. Let's nevermind the horrendous losses Amazon suffered around the millenium, it was only a hobby.

Re:And yet

[Johnny Mnemonic]

"free market principles," collusion between competitors destroys the free market. The same is true on the other side too, iow unions. I suspect you don't support unions, right? suppressing worker's wages not through lack of demand or value, but by constraining supply through secret conspiracy, is not a free market. It's just the same as the same companies conspiring to raise prices on their goods and refuse to compete with each other, which prevents the Invisible Hand of the market from working correctly.

Re:And yet

[khallow]

You have tried to equate rising wages to labor cost to anti-business.

You're the only one doing the equating. Let's look at what roman_mir actually wrote:

and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

Notice the complete absence of any mention of wages anywhere in the original post.

Let's nevermind the horrendous losses Amazon suffered around the millenium, it was only a hobby.

So Amazon has no intent to ever make a profit? Losing money now to make more money later is not an alien concept.

Re:And yet

[khallow]

Here's a hint...I'm not interested in solving those problems through a business or company, I'm interested in solving it through a government.

I get you're really interested in mashing that square peg in that round hole.

Which protects the freedom to live, by doing such things as removing the freedom to kill. Which protects the freedom to own by taking away the freedom to take.

Except when government becomes the enabler of killing and taking.

Why just look at your focus on "regulating interstate commerce" when the subject of discussion isn't on the particulars of a framework of government, but still on the principles. Not that I concur your interpretation is correct, and it's certainly not supported in the actual jurisprudence, but even if I were to believe that, I'd simply assert that the US Constitution be changed instead. It does need some reformation, it has a lot of flaws that should be fixed.

Such as allowing for property seizure in cases where the owner didn't commit a crime? Those are rationalized under that interstate commerce clause.

Re:And yet

[Livius]

They only hire people really, really good at the straight face.

(Or they're actually mentally ill from the cognitive dissonance.)

Re:And yet

[darkseid]

Are you posting because the pages to your copy of "Atlas Shrugged" are stuck together again?

Re:And yet

[udachny]

I am not against unions that do not derive their power from government, so if you want to start your own union, you should be able to, however as an employer, I should not be compelled to work with a union, so I should be able to fire all people in the union, it's my discretion. Agreement between two companies not to hire employees from each other is suboptimal, but nowhere near the scale of damage that government causes with rules and regulations and taxation and inflation. As I said, the problem here is not that Apple and Google decided to agree not to hire from each other, the problem is that there are so few companies in the first place that such agreements can even be noticed.

How small and pathetic is the true state of USA economy when such irrelevant to the larger picture agreements become items of discussion? I will tell you how sad, small and pathetic the true state of USA economy is.

34% of American households feel they are worse off now than in 2008. So more than a third of American households feel that during today's so called "recovery" they are worse off than during the year 2008, the year when the economic crisis hit USA.

Again, the problem is so few employers are out there and unamerican unconstitutional decisions like this one by this court will not help at all, not even a little, it only makes it worse.

---
Anyway, enjoy my last comment here, I had to use my backup account to leave this one. The moderators are already in full swing right now all over my comments, as they often are, making sure that I cannot participate in this discussion. Once they push the 'karma' low enough, I'll not be able to continue leave comments for a while, which is the point I take it, to ensure that the echo-chamber is unchallenged.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Goal of a company is indeed to make profits. Which leads to some pretty terrible things, in itself, since profits come from others. Actual legitimacy of the transaction? Not a part of it.

That's why they will seek to profit in ways like slavery, theft, and murder. It's a tough question why and how they exist as concepts, you shouldn't confuse governmental recognition of them as creating them though. People are quite capable of thinking of this kind of thing on their own. So we have ways to deter the behavior. In the form of government, rather than entities that exist to seek profit. If your entities exist for that reason, then they will be inclined to exploit you.

And no, I can't agree with your historical theories. The origins of government are lost in the past, so it's pretty much all speculation, but I'd give more credit to the calendar-theory than your contention. Same as I'd point out that America's growth was due to a variety of resources to develop and expand into. Opportunity by chance, rather than what you believe.

But you may have noted, I wasn't talking about why government was formed, but why it exists, today. The established purpose, do you think it is not to serve the people? But sure the system of government has evolved, and it continually has to evolved and people have to be involved in that. Because the price of existence? Constant vigilance. Laziness, inertia, jealousy, and other emotions like fear and greed, are much easier than the maintenance that goes into doing the right thing. You have to keep moving forward. You can't stop.

Sorry if that gets in the way of profits though. That may hurt some companies. Oh well. The rest of us don't exist for their profits.

Re:And yet

[TiggertheMad]

This is essentially why the "natural rate" of unemployment is not zero: There are workers who are not willing to accept the jobs that companies are willing to offer them.

It is also interesting to point out that there is an 'Unemployment Rate' statistic that is computed, but I don't think there is a corresponding 'Empty Job' statistic that is tracked in a similar fashion. In a perfect world, would the only thing preventing X workers from filling the X job openings in society be the negotiated rate of pay? (After all, everybody has their price.)

Re:And yet

[Dutch Gun]

I'm pretty sure the reason you were modded as flamebait is that you appear to be rather sympathetic to two multi-billion dollar corporations that were illegally conspiring to suppress the true market value of the wages of their highly skilled employees. You also touched a particularly sensitive nerve by justifying the use of outsourcing, something bound to be pretty unpopular on this site, so it's not too surprising. I do agree with some of the points you made. But it's the last paragraph that's the killer.

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other...

It doesn't matter what excuse you provide after that. That's the topic at hand, and that's what their punishment is all about. I agree that there are too many government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs. But you can't use that to justify what these companies did. It was wrong, plain and simple, as well as being illegal. These are not companies that are desperately trying to stay profitable - one could understand if not condone the actions if they were unable to turn a profit due to skyrocketing labor costs. This is just trying to maximize profits at the expense of their workers - nothing more than that.

Despite my personal disagreement with your position, your point was stated clearly, without inflammatory language or personal attacks. Unfortunately, -1 Flamebait all too often means "I vehemently disagree with you and wish to show my displeasure / suppress your viewpoint". It's petty and narrow-minded to mod someone down just because you disagree with someone. Goodness knows we can't actually have people disagreeing about something more substantial than one's personal choice of code editor.

Re:And yet

[sjames]

If there was actually a shortage, all of those companies would insist on being free to poach where they could to make sure their own needs are met. If they can afford to ignore a large pool of potential employees, they aren't suffering from a shortage.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. It's not like people are turning down Jobs at Google and Apple because they don't pay enough or wont negotiate on salary. These companies are hiring everyone that's qualified and passes the interview. The advanced tech worker shortage is real and is completely orthogonal to salary shenanigans.

Some do turn down jobs at google. I did. Additionally, my previous employer successfully managed to poach from google.

Google is fairly middle-of-the-pack salary-wise. They recruit by reputation and perks. If you are really good, you can get better offers elsewhere.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I am extremely sympathetic to anybody who is trying to run a business and I am absolutely unsympathetic to anybody who wants to use government force and oppression to steal (and all of it is oppression, government only should exist to protect private property, nothing else).

Of-course outsourcing is a valid tool to lower cost of labour, as I said, the labour costs are very high even if the final net salary for an employee is low, the reasons are of-course government theft.

As to Apple and Google, I absolutely disagree that anything that was done was illegal. USA government has no authority to declare any of it illegal, to regulate any such agreements at all. Being illegal in this sense means no more than for narcotics being illegal and AFAIC war on drugs is as much unauthorised power grab by the oppressive government propelled by the jealous and juvenile crowd (the mob that wants to use government to steal and subsidise itself) as any business regulations, income related taxes, inflation (money printing) are an illegal, unauthorised, unconstitutional power grab.

As to the moderation, it is not done to one comment, it's done systematically by a number of people who are more interested in maintaining an echo chamber than actually they are in having any form of discussion whatsoever. Sometimes some of my comments are moderated up and I can leave a few more comments here, then of-course I step on the toes of those, who hate my message and down the karma goes again in flames, so I cannot use my user name to leave my comments here.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it turns out, workers are actually people, and people have value that they want respected.

A good way to achieve that would be to f*cking start respecting yourself, as opposed to going to employers and governments and begging for handouts.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I am interested in your ideals, if you are ever near Riverside County or Clearwater, I would be interested in meeting you. We need someone like you.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I visit those places sometimes, anybody can contact roman_mir it's not a problem, that's what the hotmail.com is for with that name.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Collusion among players in the marketplace to artificially alter market conditions is by definition anti-competitive, and thus subject to regulation. I am all for a free and open marketplace, but regulation is necessary and proper to make the playing field level. Not fair -- it never has to be fair! -- but artificial impediments unrelated to market forces must be eliminated as much as is practical.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to H1B visa employees is to simply have combination of a wage requirement plus an annual tariff on H1B visa employees such that the total cost of the H1B visa employee is higher than the median employee costs.

If the companies still want H1B visa employees then there is a genuine shortage, and they'll pay what it takes to get employees.

If suddenly they don't want piles H1B visas and start hiring locally, well.. that tells us there wasn't really a shortage.

Given H1B employees tend to get paid less though, I expect that's the main reason they are desirable.

Guess what? There is a minimum wage requirement on H1Bs. Guess what? There is a $6,000+ processing fee for H1Bs that act as tarrifs. Guess what? It costs more to hire an H1B than local. Guess what? A local worker can take an H1Bs job away at anytime by meeting the absolute minimum requirement of the job description and the job description must be posted in public at the company.

All these H1B bullshit that people spew have been eliminated for decades.

The main problem is that H1B is 90% Indian and Chinese and there is a certain "hate" for such people. Do people ever mean H1B employees from England, Australia, Netherlands etc? Nope. By H1B, they mean Indian and Chinese high tech workers.

Re:And yet

[Belial6]

Even better is to require the company to hire a local worker at equal wages who produce nothing. The premise of H1B is that there are no local workers with the correct skill set to do the job. let the company hire all the H1Bs that they want. Just make them pay full wages to a local worker to train them to do the job. Given that this will double the pay that the companies claim is the prevailing wage, even if they are driving wages down, it will still cost them significantly more than just a local worker. This will give them incentive to actually train the local so that an H1B is not necessary. This would give businesses the flexibility to get workers when needed, while protecting the future by improving the skills of locals.

Re: And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the association with Hitler rhetoric? Sure, fascists and authoritarians and totalitarians make those kinds of promises. And a doctor or person seeking investments makes the same kind of promises as a con artist or quack doctor.

It's almost as if you can't know people by the hats they wear and have to show some discernment.

Even roman_Mir here is promising some idealistic freedom with his advocacy. At best, it is naive. At worst? He knows it won't work, but sells the fair tale anyway.

Unfortunately, your particular spiel is just a tired and baseless bit that makes for its own trope.

Re:And yet

[phorm]

Even at wage/cost parity, it still might not cover the benefit of having an employee who is beholden to the company and less likely to report unpaid overtime and/or poor working conditions etc.

Look at the situation in Canada with TFW's. Approximately the same pay, but employees were benefiting from the ability to shaft employees while holding the "we'll pull your work visa if you don't tow the line" card.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Achieving business profits in free market capitalism is the most moral way to run an economy, since profits in a free market economy only come from voluntary exchange and participation rather than coercion that fascists and socialists (basically thieves and oppressors) want.

Funny. I don't recall volunteering to businesses burning coal and blasting me with soot, dumping waste in my water supply, or 101 other things that businesses regularly do that harm me. But, yes, keep pretending that everything in the whole world can be framed in the scope of "free market capitalism" while ignoring that businesses don't need to eat, sleep, or need any actual shelter to continue their existence so inherently are in a better bargaining position than any human. To be sure, businesses are legal farces created to extrapolate the issue of handling of property in aggregating and multiplexing ways to avoid the neigh impossibility of actually running companies as a collection of individuals with a complex cross-agreement of contracts. Once you recognize that businesses are government formed, it only logically follows that companies are also bound by government regulation.

Otherwise, you're left with anarchy and a hope that somehow magically the free market will stop the Somali pirates.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so instead of one worker you get to pay for two, one of which needs to be supervised taking up valuable time from another worker. Sign me up.

Re:And yet

[MightyMartian]

H1Bs from New Jersey get a lot of grief.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

>The solution to H1B visa employees is to simply have combination of a wage requirement plus an annual tariff on H1B visa employees such that the total cost of the H1B visa employee is higher than the median employee costs.

The joke's on you. Google, Adobe, Facebook, et. al. would be perfectly fine with that. The body shops would be devastated but that doesn't save you since that means more stuff would just simply be moved overseas.

Re:And yet

[JanneM]

Given the premises of this thread (the costs and salaries of work immigration need to be controlled by the state), here a half-serious suggestion:

Have work immigrants be employed by your federal govermnent, not by the company they work for. The immigrant reports their working hours and conditions to the government, and they get their salary paid out from there. The government dispatches the worker to the company, and get the salary and other costs paid back from them.

The great benefit is that the worker is no longer there at the mercy of the company, and has no incentive to accept bad conditions or missing pay checks from them. And in any labour dispute they have the backing of a major legal and administrative organization. The government gets a clear view of exactly who the work immigrants are and what they do for their employers. The companies are relieved of some of the responsibility for these workers. Everybody has a common, single point of focus where they can turn in case of problems.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people ever mean H1B employees from England, Australia, Netherlands etc? Nope. By H1B, they mean Indian and Chinese high tech workers.

People from first world countries have no reason to come to America and work for lower than standard wages. People from third world countries do.

Re: And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Roads and bridges are pretty sweet as well.

Re:And yet

[AK Marc]

companies ... exist ... to make money.

Companies are "people." Why do people exist? Companies exist so people can pool resources to do what people do. What do people do?

For your statement to be correct, the sole purpose of people existing must be to make a profit. That is suitably flamebait.

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other, it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

And that's loonitarian bullshit. Lower regulations, and there are more worker deaths, and more profits, but not more jobs (except to replace the dead workers). When the minimum wage goes down, there aren't more jobs, there are fewer. When the minimum wage goes up, there aren't fewer jobs, but more. Reality proves loontarians wrong every time. That's why you are flamebait.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

New Jersey in general gets a lot of grief. Most of it is well deserved.

Re:And yet

[serviscope_minor]

Despite my personal disagreement with your position, your point was stated clearly, without inflammatory language or personal attacks. Unfortunately, -1 Flamebait all too often means "I vehemently disagree with you and wish to show my displeasure / suppress your viewpoint". It's petty and narrow-minded to mod someone down just because you disagree with someone. Goodness knows we can't actually have people disagreeing about something more substantial than one's personal choice of code editor.

This is why I have roman_mir on my friends list, so /. automatically up-mods him for me. I rarely agree with his conclusions, but his posts are generally well thought out and argued. However, they're usually downmodded to hell, because people disagree.

Re:And yet

[serviscope_minor]

As to slavery, thievery, murder all of those concepts are government concepts first and foremost and in a free market economy people don't need governments to deal with any of it, private courts and private security is enough to deal with aberrations.

Well how do you force people to abide by the private courts? If you force it by virtue of private security, then you're just a de-facto government and have become what apparently you don't need.

Re:And yet

[Rockoon]

I agree that there are too many government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs. But you can't use that to justify what these companies did. It was wrong, plain and simple, as well as being illegal.

How was it "wrong" and why is "illegal" something we care about?

Behold the ordinance of laborers which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)

Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong. As you see here one of the first labor laws of the western world pretty much mandated exactly what these two companies were doing. It can be argued that such laws were necessary at the time because there was an extreme labor shortage. Well now there is an extreme jobs shortage. It is clear is that governments do not always enact laws that are to the benefit of the working class, and that changing conditions can also alter what is beneficial and what is not.

Now, for something to be "wrong" as you declare then you need to argue the morality of it. This is something you have not done but instead have simply taken it for granted that these agreements are wrong.

If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal, then I believe that your morality should lead you to the conclusion that these sorts of agreements are not "wrong." To outlaw these agreements is to weigh the liberty of the worker above that of the liberty of the employer. I personally think that a discriminating application of liberty is despicable. I believe that you could argue a philosophy that put such discrimination into the "morally right" category but I do not think that you would feel good about yourself while making it because you would know that the philosophy itself is reprehensible.

"but they are rich!" is not an excuse any more than "but they are black!", "but they are women!", or "but they are gay!"

...liberty and justice for all.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

You failed economics, didn't you? If they recruit employees from other companies, they have to make better offers, and they will have to make better counter-offers to their own employees to counteract poaching by other companies. They do not have bottomless pits of money for salary; they calculated that it was better to have a conspiracy against poaching than to try to poach. (There was also Apple's threat of patent lawsuits if Google in particular didn't agree to the deal.)

Re:And yet

[geoskd]

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other, it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

No, the problem is the free market economy. Economists will tell you that the proper functioning of free markets requires several things. First, It can exist only in the presence of proper supply and demand. This requirement has a prerequisite: Scarcity. without scarcity, Supply and demand cannot work, and the free market economy adjusts to create artificial scarcity.

This problem is compounded in the labor market, where disenfranchised individuals go on to have very high costs for society. The markets approach to these (obsolete) people is to simply discard them, but in sufficient quantities these people can and will destroy society through political action, or in extreme cases, military action.

Both of these problems are compounded by technology which allows the general elimination of scarcity, especially in the labor market. This is having the effect of eroding one of the fundamental requirements of capitalism. In the 1930s, it took a radical social agenda to rip large amounts of capital away from the capitalists and basically give it to the bottom 10% to restore a temporary stability to the markets. Welfare, medicare and social security are all socialist concepts, and yet have been one of the only long term solutions to the problems listed above.

The problem with socialist programs is that, like anarchy, they cant truly exist outside of specific government protections because they require a power vacuum, and as soon as that exists, it is filled by the first people to show up (the last people you want in power).

Re:And yet

[TapeCutter]

Game of Thrones

Is a fucking TV series, the reason it's popular is the same reason Shakespeare has lasted so long, it paints a compelling and simplistic picture of human behaviour. Humans are apes, they have a complex hierarchical social structure. Like most of us here you're nowhere near the top of that structure and never will be no matter how much you rant about how the current rules stopping you from owning your own court and dealing out your personal idea of justice via your own personal jackbooted militia. Be honest with yourself and your readers, come out and tell them straight you desire to be their demi-god.

From memory you're in your 40's and have been posting your incoherent garbage for years, isn't it about time you grew up, got over yourself, and cheered the fuck up!.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

Not really. People consider factors besides salary when choosing jobs -- location, fringe benefits, work content, prestige, and more -- and there are other constraints on worker/job compatibility. A married person might become a homemaker if it takes too much effort to find a job that is sufficiently attractive; moving to a different city is expensive, especially for someone who expects low earnings; an employer cannot have a workforce that consists entirely of people who are learning to be productive in their jobs; the list goes on.

Most fundamentally, though, the number of available jobs is flexible in a way that defies quantification. If an employer has unmet demand, they could hire more workers if they can find workers at a low enough salary. It might be cheaper for the employer to hire more people who are individually less productive than to hire more-skilled workers. Automation and other forms of labor substitution further complicate the equilibrium. In contrast, the number of people who have applied for unemployment assistance is very easy to measure.

Re:And yet

[AmiMoJo]

Unions are necessary because of the huge imbalance of power between the employer and the employee. The company can replace most of its staff easily and at minimal cost. Most employees can't afford to be out of work for long.

Re:And yet

[Dutch Gun]

As a society, we make value judgments all the time about what sort of behaviors should be allowed or prohibited when engaging in commerce. Most of them are based on nothing more than a simple application of the golden rule, or other basic tenants of morality that most societies can agree upon: Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't cheat. Etc, etc.

I wish you luck in trying to argue that, from a moral perspective, two corporations should have the right to secretly negotiate in order to suppress their employee salaries and maximize their profits. Don't lie. Don't cheat. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you have your evidence for mod trolls.

Re:And yet

[Seumas]

Fortunately, abundant litigation when dealing with US employees will surely make them want to hire more US employees, in the future.

Re:And yet

[thrich81]

"the reason a government exists is to serve the people, not to earn a profit
- wrong. The reason that governments exist is our inertia, laziness and jealousy. Originally governments were all nobility with the power in hand to kill you."
No, you both are wrong on this count. The reason governments exist is because nation-states with organized governments can out-compete any other form of human organization both economically and militarily. It is conceivable that this is a local minimum in human organizational effectiveness but it has been true for some thousands of years now (often with a closely integrated religion included). This statement of reality says nothing about the desirability or morality of government but it is a statement of fact for now. Will some super-national organizations (multinational corporations) superseded governments some day -- I hope not in my lifetime. As far as the libertarian dream of loosely organized self-reliant bands of free living peoples becoming dominant? -- it's been tried, isn't going to happen.

Re:And yet

[MrKaos]

I am not against unions that do not derive their power from government, so if you want to start your own union, you should be able to, however as an employer, I should not be compelled to work with a union, so I should be able to fire all people in the union, it's my discretion. Agreement between two companies not to hire employees from each other is suboptimal, but nowhere near the scale of damage that government causes with rules and regulations and taxation and inflation. As I said, the problem here

Free assembly is the primary expression of democracy. For you to asset that an employer with 100's of millions of dollars of resources can contrive legal agreements, collude with each other and fire people at their discretion because they exercise those rights is an admission that America is not a democracy but a corpocracy. You're suggesting as soon as ordinary people openly, legally, democratically, get together, combine resources for their mutual benefit it's your opinion that they should be un-employable. What about the companies that *do* want to do the right thing by their employees but can't because they have to compete with these unetical entities who act in secret collusion to derive profit from supressing their employees salaries?

These corporations operate in western countrys that protects them by rule of law devised by citizens. These companies don't deserve to enjoy the benefits of operating in a stable environment provided by a democracy if they are not going to pull their weight in securing the prosperity of the citizens who provide that stability. If the free market determines that the price of a good or service should increase because it's in demand then that applies to people as well. If their skills are in demand because they invested in education to develop it then why shouldn't they profit from the investment in their education free of any hidden machinations to suppress the very free market these corporations expect to profit in.

Most IT workers I know don't belong to a union because they expect companies operate by the same principles that drive a free market. Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe have created a precedence that demanded a response that no-one in IT should have ever had to seek all because they didn't want to share the prosperity of the IT industry with the people who make up the IT industry. Clear examples of corporations working to suppress the free market and upset the balance that has negated the need for unions in the IT industry for decades.

Re:And yet

[ultranova]

It's not about who is dispensable or not, companies do not exist to hire people, they exist to make products / provide services that allow the owners to make money, that's the purpose of a company.

People start companies to institutionalize some set of goals, typically including making money. Society supports this, for example by acknowledging the existence of a company as a legal entity, because of the side effects, such as employment. Other tie-in groups have their own reasons to either support or oppose a company, which will naturally affect its ability to meet its goals. So yes, companies absolutely exist to employ people, and should expect to face official and unofficial penalties if they ignore that duty.

One might even argue that the entire concept of "business" is the art of giving other people opportunities to further their goals by furthering yours.

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other, it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

Success is always due to genius leadership, while failure is always someone else's fault, eh? Or more generally: profits are private but losses are public.

The problem in the US and elsewhere is that we let companies grow to the point where their failure would cause a cascade failure in economy, hence they are "too big to fail" and thus outside the normal regulation systems of capitalism. Also, even if a company does go down in flames, the leadership sails away with their golden parachutes, to direct other companies to their doom, and it's only the powerless rank and file who suffer due to no fault of their own.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States is ~5% of the world population. That means up to 95% of the smartest candidates for a job will need visas of some sort. Or did you want companies to artificially lower their standards just to employ more U.S. citizens?

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

the sole purpose of people existing must be to make a profit

that's pretty obviously the case according to society and our laws

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

there's nothing the average american hates more than the constitution. they get enraged any time you suggest the government doesn't actually have the power to do something.

Re:And yet

[MrKaos]

Behold the ordinance of laborers which made it illegal to "entice away" other peoples employees (and also fixed waged to low levels, and required everyone under the age of 60 to work.)...

during the black plague in England in the 1300's - hardly relevant now.

Just because the government says its illegal that does not make it wrong.

And just because something is legal does not make it just.

If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal, then I believe that your morality should lead you to the conclusion that these sorts of agreements are not "wrong."

Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people - so that argument is a strawman.

To outlaw these agreements is to weigh the liberty of the worker above that of the liberty of the employer. I personally think that a discriminating application of liberty is despicable.

A corporation may have the same rights as a human, but it is not a human. The concept of a Proprietary Limited Liability Company already *is* an application of liberty that is despicable because it is absolved from the full responsibility for its actions. It's liability is limited, a person's is not.

...liberty and justice for all.

How does a corporation pledge allegience to anything not in it's corporate charter?

Re:And yet

[russotto]

Guess what? There is a minimum wage requirement on H1Bs.

Given a lack of standardized job titles, it's easy enough to fudge. Anyway, H1Bs are so dominant in some areas that their salaries set the prevailing wage.

There is a $6,000+ processing fee for H1Bs that act as tarrifs.

Not high enough to be significant.

A local worker can take an H1Bs job away at anytime by meeting the absolute minimum requirement of the job description and the job description must be posted in public at the company.

The first part isn't even true, and in any case the job description typically includes things which work out to "experience in this particular position.

The main problem is that H1B is 90% Indian and Chinese and there is a certain "hate" for such people. Do people ever mean H1B employees from England, Australia, Netherlands etc? Nope. By H1B, they mean Indian and Chinese high tech workers.

You can put the race card down now. About 64% are Indian, 8% Chinese. Do you ever see rooms full of nothing but English H-1B workers, with maybe one token American in sight? How about French? Australian? Japanese? You DO see that with Indian H-1Bs. Why is that, do you think?

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a hypercube into a Mandlebrot set.

But you're right, it is a terrible thing when a government enables killing and taking. It's a terrible thing when an individual does it. However, the world where we all eschew such mechanisms, seems to be quite far away, as most people don't consider that to be especially practical. So we keep those terrible tools around, and hopefully use them with the utmost discretion.

Still, one important aspect of the relationship of you to your government is your capacity to work for change. This even includes the right to revolution. If you wish to abstain from that fine, but not everybody else concurs with that being a blanket prohibition. You may not feel it rises to that level yourself, but in the meantime, however, I submit that you work on a petition and lobbying first.

Re:And yet

[junglee_iitk]

The only problem with your solution is that you are still assuming that the government works for the people. Government works for lobbies, and people are not a lobby.

Re:And yet

[sjames]

Actually, no I didn't but you may have. An actual shortage would mean they couldn't find enough people to maximize their own productivity. They would be leaving money on the table for a lack of employees necessary to do the needed work.

In such a case, they will prefer to pay a bit more for the employees so they can scoop up that money on the table.

At the same time, they would also be more flexible about hiring older engineers, offering scholarships, more telecommute opportunities, etc. If, that is, there was an actual shortage.

Re:And yet

[chihowa]

That it's an undesirable situation is the point. The availability of H1B workers is a construct of US laws and the point of US laws should be to benefit the citizens of the US and the country itself. Hiring foreign workers (and not making them citizens and integrating them into the US) and leaving US workers unemployed and incapable of performing necessary jobs, as well as leaving US-based job functions dependent on foreign citizens, is an undesirable situation for the US and its citizens.

Anything that remedies the situation by training US citizens for US jobs is good for citizens and the country alike. A good clue to this is the fact that very few (if any) other countries have systems in place to displace their own citizens' jobs and deliberately sell out their country's knowledge and skill to foreign interests. Hell... if the whole situation didn't primarily benefit the extremely wealthy, shutting it down in the name of national security would be an easy sell.

Re:And yet

[udachny]

Free assembly is one expression of democracy (though I am against democracy, don't get me wrong, I am against mobocracy), however you are correct.

Another expression of democracy is free association. It absolutely 100% does not matter who is deciding not to associate with you, be it a girl next door, a club of interests or an employer for whatever reasons, that's completely irrelevant. I want people to be free to discriminate or not based on their own ideas and believes, and you are telling me that you can't handle that freedom, freedom of association.

Freedom of assembly is absolutely not impeded in any way by any private party, be it an employer or anybody else. Freedom of assembly can only be impeded by government. The entire concept of rights is completely misunderstood by vast majority of people that have gone through the public brain washing system, so called schools, that teach you nothing.

Rights are protection against government abuse, nothing else, everything else is either an entitlement (that nobody should have) or an obligation (that nobody should be imposed upon by any government).

Corporations are a front, a fiction, they are a fiction and behind every corporation there is a person or a group of people. AFAIC corporations shouldn't even be established by government laws, government has nothing to do with business, a corporation in fact is a self governing body, nothing else. You may want to figure out where the word comes from in the first place, the only purpose of government involvement in corporation is registration. Registration of corporation is what 'citizens devised' (and it wasn't citizens actually that devised it, you are wrong on that too).

However I am not arguing pro or against corporate charter here, I am talking about the reasons that people start their own businesses, corporations or anything else. A BUSINESS, a business for the purpose of generating profits, not a 'corporation' for the purpose of incorporating a legal entity. Government shouldn't have anything to do with people running businesses, that is my point. Whether corporations should be legal entities that are given any special treatment? NO! Owners of joint stock companies that eventually became corporations for the sake of simplicity of regulations shouldn't be hidden behind corporate facade from litigation.

I disagree as a general principle with the entire idea that there should be ANY form of protection of private individuals behind corporate facade in case the individuals (or the company) are sued or become liable in any way.

Yes, I am against special privileges that government provides to anybody, anybody at all, including all people, all living or dead creatures, all legal or illegal entities. Of-course I am completely against the very concept of having any federal power over people in the first place and hopefully over time, given the facts of life, such as freedom of movement of information (the Internet), freedom of movement at all (transportation, immigration, emigration) eventually people do away with federations, with dictatorial entities that are trying to steal their property and lives from them.

Governments' "Limited Liability" garbage is what created possibility to create gigantic faceless entities, known as modern 'corporations' that removed private liability from the company owners. This is a moral hazard that government created and this moral hazard is what makes it possible for the modern stock market to exist not by virtue of the real business value, real earnings, long term goals, but by virtue of government created guarantee and protection that destroys the principle of running a private business that incontrovertibly adds value by its activity in a normal free market rather than extracting capital from unsophisticated 'investors', who are really unaware of what is going on around them. This is a moral hazard and it was created by governments.

Apple and Google or anybody else must be

Re:And yet

[khallow]

So what makes collusion "artificial"? I imagine there are a number of people who would argue that the problem is that collusion is instead a natural consequence of free, open markets and a "market force," hence, a natural market force, yet one which must be resisted.

My use of the coy third person above is because I think the artificial/natural division is arbitrary, especially when discussing phenomena like markets which tend to be a bit of both. What's artificial in an artificial market?

I also think it's worth remember that while regulation can be helpful to making a "playing field" more level, it's far more useful for making the playing field less level. To give a IT labor example, I think the games surrounding the H1-B program in the US (and the US's abysmal immigration system as a whole) are a good example of that. Those are depressing US labor more than collusion games do IMHO.

Also, I must somewhat echo the grandparent's sentiment (though his legal interpretation is delusional). I don't see that a level playing field is actually that valuable especially if it comes at the expense of stable businesses. And given that the rules in question are readily subverted (and outright flouted), they may actually be harmful by both providing a false sense of security, by providing yet another mechanism for government to selectively enforce such regulation, and by masking market signals that more competition in a sector is viable (if the labor is cheap in a sector due to employer-side collusion then that's yet more incentive for new competitors to enter the market).

Finally, it's worth noting that the collusion fell apart on its own due to a new party (Facebook) "poaching" employees from the existing group (indeed without consequence except to significantly raise labor costs for at least one rival, Google).

Re:And yet

[khallow]

If we're speaking of straightforward stuff, secret negotiations to collude against workers may be wrong, but they aren't lying or stealing, perhaps not cheating either. Lying is the spreading of deliberate falsehoods. Stealing is the taking of someone's property. There's no such thing going on here. Similarly, cheating indicates the business acted unfairly or dishonestly in order to gain advantage. I can see how in some moral systems, fairness can be defined to preclude collusion, but that's only a feature of those particular moral systems.

Re:And yet

[khallow]

I was thinking that as well. I really wish roman_mir would get his community of detractors to stop downmodding my posts.

Re:And yet

[khallow]

Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people

They are between the leaders of these businesses who happen to be people. It would be just as much an act of collusion between people, if none of the businesses were corporations and thus, considered "people" by your viewpoint.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

You're applying single-stage reasoning to an iterated game, which is a good way to lose in the iterated game. If company X hires an employee from company Y by making a better offer, how should company Y respond in order to maximize its own revenue? (It will almost always involve a counter-offer to the employee, and if that fails, company Y will probably try to hire away another experienced engineer for reasons that Fred Brooks described in The Mythical Man-Month.)

If you don't think there is a shortage of software developers in the US, why are developers in the US paid so much more than ones in Europe?

Also, there is no hard threshold to define an "actual" shortage when you're talking about such a large job market.

Re:And yet

[sjames]

Actually, no. I am well aware of that. It's called supply and demand and it's part of the market. It's funny how free market capitalists suddenly like regulated markets when they might have to pay employees better. What they call a shortage is actually more like the lack of a glut.

If you don't think there is a shortage of software developers in the US, why are developers in the US paid so much more than ones in Europe?

Probably because the U.S. companies insist on being located in the most expensive place in the country. If they were serious about cutting costs, they'd move development to cheaper cities and just maintain a sales office in SV.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is for-profit companies are not in the business of generating liberty. So trusting them to promote and create it is suicide.

Likewise, I will agree with you this is not something a government can do or should be trusted with either.

"But they are poor" is not an excuse any more than "but they are not a corporation" or "but they are an employee".

You make some good points, but I find it hard to believe it is not mostly a despicable and cowardly sleight of hand --

If you hold the belief that the liberty of all people should be equal

Then it seems the "corporation" entity inherently takes away liberty of ALL people. and we get 2 classes of citizens:

- corporations
- everyone else

So to ALLOW such an agreement is inherently damaging liberty of everyone else. BY YOUR OWN LOGIC, government should not recognize or treat a "corporation of people" any differently than a "single individual".

Ergo, the concept of a "corporation" should not even be something the law legally recognizes AT ALL since the entire concept seems to be entirely to make a mockery of individual liberty by wanting all the rights and privileges and protection without any of the responsibility.

We are a corporation, you can't touch our liberty...but legally, you sue the corporation, not the individual. You really wonder why people think you have your head up your ass?

You are not wrong, you may not even be intentionally pulling wool over people's eyes, but you only speak half the argument.

By ALLOWING certain privileges, you are EFFECTIVELY outlawing everything else. It is the same thing.

You have propagandized and hyperbolized your views into a sad and laughable (but I am afraid someone will believe you) rant.

It is the same thing. If you allow "special privileges for white folk" then that is the same effect as "no privileges for blackies!"

Spin away, call it "liberty" but talking about the "worker" and "employer" is not how liberty works, you are already too late and missed liberty by a long shot when things get to that point.

Liberty is concerned with individuals, and inherent rights. Not something granted from you, or me, or a government, or a corporation,
or God, subject to whims and arbitrary mood swings.

You are striving for liberty perhaps, but seem to be either deliberately muddying the waters, or very confused.

I agree, in general, agreements between consenting individuals (neither party being extorted) should not be outlawed.

But that is a far cry from reality, where it is "work or don't eat" and you can say "well, start your own company" but that is no solution for everyone, and in fact does not work for anyone if everyone did that -- see other posts.

The crux of your confusion (or intentional two-facedness) is: Why do you wish to outlaw the ability for people to not be at the mercy of corporations? A corporation is a LEGAL concept. That is reality. If you believe in some other concept of "corporation" then you should not be lobbying the government and enjoying government protection and legal system protection to run your enterprise.

You are drinking government kool-aid by the gallon, pissing all over everyone, then crying when they tell you that you need to chip in on raincoats. Please, piss on your own yard (good luck "owning" that yard without getting a government's permission first) and then maybe you will see others stop asking for raincoats.

Please, start your illegal/outlawed corporation that pays no taxes, does not answer to anyone, and is full of liberty. I might even come work for you.

But if you start a government-sanctioned "corporation" and are a government-blessed and LEGAL "employer" then no shit Sherlock, you are expected to follow the law. Why the fuck else are you playing by the book?

You want LIBERTY? WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU WORKING WITH A GOVERNMENT AND LEGAL SYSTEM THEN, to be called an "employer" and "corporation" ? Can't have it both ways.

You

Re:And yet

[sysrammer]

Lobbies are people.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

Meanwhile, in the reality-based community, Apple et al. *found* a free-market solution to their woes, and are now in court because government regulations say that their solution is not allowed.

US software developer salaries are much higher than in Europe when you control for cost of living. For example, most of the big cities in Europe have higher costs of living than Silicon Valley, but software developers earn much less there. You have to look pretty far down the list of US cities -- say, Charlotte (NC) or Peoria (IL) -- to find salaries that are roughly in line with expensive places in Europe. Companies stay in Silicon Valley because of infrastructure, network effects, and because there are a lot of potential employees in the area.

Re:And yet

[sysrammer]

Interesting suggestion. It would solve some problems. Of course, it seems every time we solve a problem we create a problem.

Junglee has a point in his reply. Governments can be just as perverted as corporations, just as can be people.

Business owners won't be happy because they won't be able to pay less-than-minimum wage. To them, this will be the evil govt taking their rights (profits) away from them.

Unless the workers were somehow subsidized. Maybe they can work out some kind of business welfare system like the corporations and farmers get.

Re:And yet

[sjames]

...and because there are a lot of potential employees in the area.

So now you're saying there isn't a shortage?

Re: And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

You personally drenched with soot? Really? Look around, this is what a good compromise looks like. Everybody well off, and pollution is not out of control.

Re:And yet

[Entrope]

You missed the key word "potential" in that sentence. There are many thousands of good programmers in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area, although basically are already as employed as they wish to be. In the kind of places where you think a company might be able to relocate, there are probably dozens of programmers with the same level of skills. When a company wants to hire hundreds of good engineers, that is not very useful: they'd need to convince most of their workforce to relocate.

Re:And yet

[sjames]

There are many thousand in any large metro area.

They don't have to have just one office. In fact, many of them do have offices elsewhere that do have staff. They would emphasize those if they were serious about cutting costs. They would also give more consideration to older programmers.

I didn't miss the word 'potential' there. If they weren't potential, they would either already be hired by them or wouldn't matter to the conversation.

Just because I can'tr buy a new Ferrari for $10,000 doesn't mean there's a shortage.

Re:And yet

[MrKaos]

Well, the agreements are between corporations, not people

They are between the leaders of these businesses who happen to be people. It would be just as much an act of collusion between people, if none of the businesses were corporations and thus, considered "people" by your viewpoint.

Indeed, they are the people who represent the company and the company is legally bound to the agreement, not the people who sign it so the OP's point remains a strawman.

Re:And yet

[Lisias]

how could these companies say with a straight face that they only want more H1B visa employees due to lack worker shortage and not because they're trying to find cheaper labor?

One thing doesn't excludes the other.

There's a man-power shortage on T.I. in the whole world, and everybody wants to pay less to the ones that are still working in the field.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

You are marked as a troll primarily because that is the most accurate slashdot moderation for "religious propaganda".

How appropriate that my captcha is "reindeer"; your posts certainly depend on your own kind of Santa Claus.

Re:And yet

[dgatwood]

At its core, the purpose of government—and by this, I mean any legitimate government, as opposed to tyranny—is to protect the powerless from the powerful. Nation states with organized governments can out-compete other forms of organization precisely because they limit abuse by those with power, allowing those without power to flourish, thus creating a larger market for goods and services.

The reason we have labor laws is not merely that some companies will abuse workers, but rather that any labor contract is inherently not an agreement between equals. With the exception of people who have enough money to retire, the employee will always need the job more than the employer needs that particular person in the job. Therefore, the employee is relatively powerless in any negotiation, and the employer is powerful. Governments regulate those agreements to ensure that companies do not abuse their power to harm individuals who have little choice but to continue working (unless they want to starve).

Labor unions are another approach to balancing employers' power. These groups have many advantages and disadvantages. Their biggest advantage (IMO) is that by pitting the needs of the group as a whole against the employer, they have more leverage to negotiate better terms. Their biggest disadvantage (IMO) is that over time, they tend to become bloated organizations that have trouble representing their members adequately. Either way, to a large degree, labor unions' sole purpose for existing is as a workaround for governments not doing their job properly.

Similarly, the fundamental problem with the argument that free markets are the most moral form of dealing because of a lack of coercion, is that there isn't really a lack of coercion. When you're talking about a local-level free market, there isn't much coercion. You can always go to another store if you don't like the way one store behaves. But when you start looking at companies whose industries have high barriers to entry, such as high tech, infrastructure, and so on, that ceases to be true, because those industries tend to consolidate into monopolies or oligopolies that have much more power than consumers by their very nature. Governments can help restore the balance of power between consumers and those companies in many ways—regulation, socialization, trust busting, and so on. In the absence of action, in such markets, abuse runs rampant.

Re:And yet

[vux984]

Even at wage/cost parity

Re-read my post -- I never said parity. I want the H1B employees to come at a premium.

Look at the situation in Canada with TFW

The Canadian TFW program has depressed wages; and one of its signature features was the ability to import 'low cost labor". It doesn't really exemplify your point.

That aside, I concede the hold employers have over TFW employees itself creates its own problems. But if they were paying a significant premium for TFW employees; it wouldn't be much different than "over paying locals" in terms of motivating them to "toe the line".*

  (Its "toe" not "tow" by the way, as in metaphorically to stand with their toes against a hypothetical line -- a symbol of conformity to rules / authority)

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly think Roman_Mir is an account used by Rush Limbaugh.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rich" is not a PROTECTED CLASS. Black, women and gays ARE.

Eff-Tee-Eff-Wye

Social Security Reform:
If you make more than me, you do NOT collect.
If you have more than me, you do NOT collect.
If you are younger than me, you do NOT collect.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like someone who made something of himself trying to preserve karma. Does his middle name start with an "R"?

Someone has not been paying his fair share of taxes, defined as one cent below disincentive to perform.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Randroid! [cue robot sounds]

Someone here is enjoying life too much, certainly not I. What needs to happen here is the plot of a 1970's made-for-television Sunday Night Movie. Two minutes into the film, the protagonist who made something of himself doesn't feel 100 percent. Protagonist goes to the doctor. Two minutes later, the doctor calls and it's terminal. Eighty minutes of decline and drama ends with the camera panning to a gravestone and the protagonist's voice echos "If I had not made something of myself, I would still be alive today..." A caption appears "Don't run yourself into the ground because you desire the prize. Remember Rule Zero. Losers Live Longer"

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Godwn's Law, Thread relevancy to reality terminated.

Re:And yet

[ultranova]

Goal of a company is to make profits.

Goal of a politician is to stay in power.

The goal of a company executive is to stay in power and make money while they're at it. The goal of a goverment is the success of their country.

If you want to criticize government, do so honestly. Comparing the goals of an organization to those of an individual in another organization is transparently deceptive, and won't convince anyone.

As to slavery, thievery, murder all of those concepts are government concepts first and foremost and in a free market economy people don't need governments to deal with any of it, private courts and private security is enough to deal with aberrations.

So you'd be happy to let your grievances be settled by a judge who's being paid by your opponent? And any resulting decisions enforced by private enforcers who are likewise in their payroll?

Or did you simply figure you'll only go to court against people poorer than you?

"Don't be evil"? My ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone ever REALLY believe that?

I got a good deal on a bridge for you. It's between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Re:"Don't be evil"? My ass

[wannabgeek]

I got a good deal on a bridge for you. It's between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

They are not interested. They already built a bridge between Mountain View and Cupertino!

And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Semantics. Worker shortage = higher labor costs. They are one and the same. It's all PR.

WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[redelm]

Settlement? What settlement? This is a prima facie Clayton Act Anti-Trust violation. Multiple felonies, with jailtime due. Amazingly, this appearently exists on paper, so everyone who negotiated or signed it should go to jail.

The Clayton Act makes organizing supplier boycotts a prohibited activity. And that's just what they have done -- organized a boycott not to hire an employee, times the collective number.

That this has not gone to a Federal Grand Jury appears more like corruption than anything else.

Hang them by balls ..

[MonsterMasher]

Damn right it's too low!
.
Those bastards need to spend time behind f.ing bars, when you consider the pain ans suffering, moving, family brake-ups and suicides this kind of shit ends up doing to people, mostly men.
.
F.ing Tech companies of this size .. just go through top admin, and ALL boards of Directors, and take a vote for each manager, and nail there testicles or pussylips to boards and hall them up in the air ..
.
and let those that suffered, or anyone in the tech industry a bottle of salt water they can use to clean these people's wounds as they hang.. and tell them how it made you feel, to live with too little money .. they will pay attention if you spray when their eye's move away..
.
Thank them one for me!

Re:Hang them by balls ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies aren't human beings and shouldn't have rights.

Re: Hang them by balls ..

[Anonymous Coward]

By your words then,

It would be legal to discriminate based on race, religion, and sex.
It would be legal to fire existing workforce without cause.
It would be legal to hire foreign workers and pay them less than domestic workers.
It would be legal to not pay workers (if you could get other companies to do so, too).

Dude, I would be out of work and so would you. When everyone has no job, who is going to buy products?

Re:Hang them by balls ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how people are so pro-corporate freedom, and yet are so vehemently against the idea that a CEO should be tried for murder whenever that company's product kills somebody. It's almost like a different set of rules exists for people and corporations, as if they're entirely different entities that serve different purposes in an economy.

Re:Hang them by balls ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Those bastards need to spend time behind f.ing bars, when you consider the pain ans suffering, moving, family brake-ups and suicides this kind of shit ends up doing to people, mostly men.

Yes, those poor, poor oppressed Apple, Google, and Facebook employees! They are jumping off bridges and blowing their brains out!

Re: Hang them by balls ..

[AK Marc]

Government has no authority to dictate any salary to anybody whatsoever, it usurped that power that it didn't have and destroyed individual freedoms.

It didn't. It stated that collusion to prevent people from earning a living was illegal collusion.

As to people being out of work, the exact opposite is the case. Without laws that make it extremely expensive and difficult and dangerous (litigation) to hire and fire people, more people have jobs.

It was "free" to hire and fire people, they just illegally colluded to not hire competent people in order to taint the free market. You say that barriers to hiring and firing are bad, it was the companies that erected barriers, not the workers, or the government.

Re: Hang them by balls ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a hint as to which company you own. I'll never apply to work there.

Moar!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely illegally keeping employee wages down impacted the whole industry's wages?

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Entrope]

How was it a boycott if the engineers in question still had jobs?

Dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

...rich people don't get jail time for this sort of thing. Of course they should, but they don't, and they never will.

It isn't just. But it is how the world works. The wealthy class is held to a different set of laws than the rest of us.

This should not be surprising to you.

and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Joe_Dragon]

and now we just use H-1B they don't complain about there pay or hours they don't even want to rock the boat as if they get fired they have to get out of the usa right way.

It's time for an union in IT RIGHT NOW.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

Skilled labor doesn't need unions. Do doctors need unions? Do lawyers? No. Neither do programmers.

The H1-B visa thing is largely enabled by political forces on both sides that see political advantage in allowing in as much immigration as possible. And the no poaching agreement was illegal.

What is stupid is that none of the people that approved the policy are going to jail. This is criminal.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad. Fucking. Examples.

Lawyers have the bar association.
Doctors have AMA.

They're basically trade guilds that limit entry and make legal & medical expenses ridiculously high.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

When do we start shooting Hindus? When shall we start firebombing mandirs? Slurrying them using beef broth and gravy in superpumpers?

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Doctors and Lawyers have large lobbying bodies (AMA and ABA, respectively) that represent their interests. Does a comparably large organization exist for Programmers?

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[iced_773]

The ACM could be........but it isn't.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

If you like... and I wouldn't mind similar organizations existing for the tech world if only because we have no unified system of ethics for our profession unlike doctors and lawyers.

You cannot compel a lawyer legally to divulge private client correspondence. You cannot compel a doctor to harm a patient. Which is why executions for example are carried out by non-medical staff despite the use of medications, needles, etc.

This whole thing with the NSA is an example of something that shouldn't be possible because the tech workers should be able to cite an ethical principle that they are required to hold.

Now you might be a fan of a free wheeling system. I find a lot of be desirable in that. However, the price of such a system is that there are no rules for either side... the employee the employer... the contract can be whatever and can be changed the instant either side gets more leverage on the other.

Your idea of a union is interesting but I'd point out that unions often destroy their industries.

Now that is possibly a political problem that could be controlled by excluding political elements from the union that tend to destroy industries. The Dock Worker's union for example has rendered their industry uncompetitive which is why it is cheaper to debark goods in Mexico or Canada, then bring the freight in by train rather then unload in Long Beach or Miami.

And there are literally dozens of major examples of other unions that have famously destroyed their industries.

I want better for programmers. There are unions that do not destroy their industry. The coal miner's unions for example have been pretty successful at getting safety standards in mines while not raising costs so high that the mining companies shut down.

There are dozens of other examples of unions that are healthy and do not cause problems. But there are big political differences between them. Most people that advocate for unions are not actually interested in worker's rights. They just see unions as politically useful for their larger factional aspirations. In much the same way many people only advocate for open immigration because they want lots of undocumented workers to suddenly vote for their political faction thus overwhelming their domestic political rivals with shear weight of numbers.

My concern here is for the actual tech workers themselves. What is in their interest. Forget the larger politics. Those things are a different matter. What is in the interest of the tech workers?

A union poses serious problems for small start ups. It just makes things more complicated and the government has already made things very complicated for small companies as it is. US start ups are at record lows.

In the 1980s, about a third of all companies were new companies. Today, its less then 20 percent. If you ask small companies their biggest problem... its always red tape. its just very hard for some guy to deal with all of it. And for a new company that's who is managing ALL the red tape. Just some guy. He's rarely an expert on the red tape either. There is no one place to find all the information. He has to research everything exhaustively. And even then he's not going to be in compliance with something either because it is literally impossible or because he simply missed the regulation the first time he did research. Consider that most oil companies have been paying a fine every year for not including an additive into the gas that in one interpretation would void the warranties of most engines thus making it impossible to sell or in another interpretation simply does not exist in reality.

Yet the oil companies pay this fine every year as an effective stealth tax because their options are either to pay the fine, make their gas unsellable, or grind up magical unicorn horns to add to their fuel.

The point I'm making here is that the system is systemically fucked up on every level. I'm beyond disgusted with it and really don't see a solution here short of just spraying gasoline everywhere and lighting a match. Its futile.

If there is any hope it is in small start ups and transformative technology simply bypassing the rot. And a big monolithic union is not going to help that situation.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[JoeMerchant]

There's a local shop that hires a mix of experienced developers, kids still in college, and H1Bs... they have horrendous turnover (average tenure 1 year is because the H1Bs stay put. The college kids bolt at first opportunity, and the experienced ones seems to find better things fairly often too...

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

and now we just use H-1B they don't complain about there pay or hours they don't even want to rock the boat as if they get fired they have to get out of the usa right way.

It's time for an union in IT RIGHT NOW.

Yeah, now let's go out and kill some H1Bers and then howl in glory. Come on, who's with me?

Fucking dipshits who want to turn everything into H1B!

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

They're not strictly speaking unions though.

If you want something like the AMA ABA for programmers, that would be fine. So long as neither group does collective employment negotiations for contracts or requires that all employment contracts go through them.

If I can hire a programmer or a programmer can contract on his own without interference from such a group... then that's fine. I believe people and companies should be free to hire whomever they want on whatever terms they want. The point of a larger organization would be to give workers some leverage in those discussions as well as get laws passed to allow workers to object to company directives on ethical, safety, moral, legal, etc grounds.

This does not address the H1B situation but that's largely the result of the chamber of commerce getting co-opted by some unsavory people and the political parties seeing it as in their interest to dilute domestic voting blocks.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely disagree and here's why:

Selfish reason -
I'm pretty low-key and not a great communicator--not horrible, but could be far better--but I'm a very solid programmer.

I'm the type of coder that can dig into assembly if need be (don't enjoy it, but can do it) to understand what's actually happening on those rare occasions. Picking up new languages and technologies is pretty easy, since I actually understand the fundamentals & intuitively understand this stuff.

And unlike apparently most of the coding population, I really grasp databases. Once managers work with me, they don't want to let me go.

Yet hiring managers have to wade through dozens of polished but less technical individuals to get to someone like me. And they miss me anyway, because they can't tell someone who can code & design versus someone who cannot; so they go by how well I can interview (mediocre) and how padded the resume looks (I prefer to discuss this stuff).

Programmer like myself need a trade advocate strongly suggesting that I know my shit.

Altruistic reason -
A huge skill gap these days is in info security. When Bruce Schneier published Applied Cryptography (1st edition) back in the '90s, that was such an eye opener.
I'm proud to say I held onto (school library) and inhaled that book and read it again & again. It was exciting.

That was almost 20 years ago and yet aside from the particular algorithms, book is still terribly relevant. Coders--even experienced ones--are still make the same freaking beginner's mistakes. And this isn't just from some small shops. We see amateurish shit from Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Linkedin, and even Google on occasion.

How can we not afford to have a trade school? This stuff needs to be beaten into each & every programmer's heads.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

and now we just use H-1B they don't complain about there pay or hours they don't even want to rock the boat as if they get fired they have to get out of the usa right way.

It's time for an union in IT RIGHT NOW.

The only people who have to worry about H1-Bs are bottom feeders who deserve to have to worry about H1-Bs because of their qualifications, or rather lack thereof.

Most of the people here couldn't compete with the type of H1-Bs that Google hires on the best day they ever had.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

H-1B they don't complain about there pay

Where they are paid is not an issue. They are paid from the same location in the US just like their coworkers. What is the point you're trying to make?

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

You're saying you want accreditation and expert advocates to separate the men from the boys.

I have no problem with that. You don't need a trade union for that though.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Accreditation? Sort of.

But that' just a small part of it.

You need a professional organization that:
- Can kick out the plainly incompetent
- Pushes to hold companies liable when they use unaccredited hires or consultants that made such mistakes.

Software and IT isn't just a quirky curiosity anymore. People's lives are deeply affected and ruined ruined by bad software. And without pushing companies to do the right thing, they will do what's cheapest.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the rot is going to get worse unless IT professionals and STEM workers stand up for what's right.

Which means the AMA, and medical monopolies, disband and the instigators go to jail.

Which means the lawyers associations disband, and the instigators go to jail.

But that's too right for you, eh?

Everyone wants something for nothing; that's the problem.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[sjames]

Apparently they do, since both professions have one. Further, both professional bodies have their authority enshrined in law.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Skuld-Chan]

I'm a software packager and I'm represented by a union. I work along side a bunch of programmers, dba's, unix and windows admins - and we are all represented.

I like to think of our union as a catch all - they blow the whistle and step in when management fucks up. A good example of this is they screwed up the budget for raises this year - our representatives stepped in and worked with management to fix that.

I guess if you work somewhere where your managers aren't a bunch of fuckups - you probably don't need a union. For everyone else - don't kid yourself.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a local shop that hires a mix of experienced developers, kids still in college, and H1Bs... they have horrendous turnover (average tenure 1 year is because the H1Bs stay put. The college kids bolt at first opportunity, and the experienced ones seems to find better things fairly often too...

Normally H1B to green card takes less than a year. So, yeah the H1Bs wouldn't stay put unless they were Indian or Chinese (who have a queue to get the green card).

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[nedlohs]

Well done. Pick the two most unionized professions on the planet as your examples of not needing unions!

Their AMA and the bars have got themselves so deeply in the system you effectively can't practice those professions at all without being a union member.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

"They're not strictly speaking unions though."

Yeah, right. So if a union changes its name to an 'association', they're no longer a union.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

Sure, and if a dictatorship calls itself a democracy then its a democracy.

Listen you cheeky little fool, AMA is not a union. You don't get hired by the AMA. You get hired by the company. That is not how a union works. Your employment is controlled by the union.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? H1B to green card takes years and years. I'm Canadian, and it took me 6 years. Takes longer in India and China.

According to this: http://travel.state.gov/conten..., an EB3 (the most common classification) can't possibly get a green card today unless they started before April 2011. Which was more than 3 years ago. Even an EB2 from India has to have started 5 years ago.

And that's after a MASSIVE improvement recently. Back in April of 2011, the backlog was at least 8 years for everybody. So I guess if you extrapolate, maybe in some years you'll start seeing a 1 year for this step -- but again, this is just a step (which occurs near the end of the green card process -- this is just for the "Adjustment of Status" step)!

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

Unions don't do that. They keep people in with seniority, not competence.

Look at the teacher's unions. They literally are protecting pedophiles and even some teachers that are literally illiterate.

THAT is what unions do. Now, I grasp your concerns. But if you want that, you want something similar to what doctors and lawyers have. Not what teachers and auto workers have.

And even then, there are incompetent doctors and lawyers. Its just less common.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

The protection is that their authority is enshrined in law. And IT people and programmers should likewise have that same sort of privilege. They have too much responsibility to not have a special relationship.

Once that is in place, you really don't need anything else.

Most of the problems we've run into have come from management giving unethical orders to programmers and IT people.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

Listen you cheeky little fool, AMA is not a union. You don't get hired by the AMA. You get hired by the company. That is not how a union works. Your employment is controlled by the union.

Nope. When you "work for a union" you are hired by Bob's Electrics, and you are a member of the IBEW. If you let your IBEW membership lapse, then you can lose your employment. The same is true with lawyers. If you want to work as a lawyer for Bob's Lawfirm, you must join the Bar. If you get disbarred while a lawyer, you lose your job as well. But the whole time, you work for Bob, not the union.

The AMA and ABA are unions. They are trade organizations you must join to be in that job.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

THAT is what unions do.

Nope. They protect workers from arbitrary and capricious firings. If the teacher is a pedophile, prove it and fire them. If they are literally illiterate, prove it and fire them. Whining about not being able to prove it to fire them is the reason the unions exist. To stop jackasses like you from making unfounded accusations and expecting mass firings.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read a lot of posts in this thread and it is amazingly clear to me that most of the posters here, who I assume are mostly from the US, simply do NOT know how a union works. I'm not sure why this would be, but I do realise that there is a lot of disinformation in the US about unions and they are not held in very high regard.

Here in Australia a union works like this:

  - You are hired by your employer as normal.

  - Some workplaces have compulsory union membership, which would have been previously negotiated. If you don't like it, don't take a job there. It's an interesting political debate, but at the end of the day, the compulsory union membership is to the advantage of the union which is to the advantage of the worker.

  - If you enter a dispute with your employer then you can ask the union for help. AND THEY WILL. Legal aid, counselling, wage advice, negotiating. All you guys on here saying "I should be free to negotiate my own contract" well guess what: you fucking can. But with a union, they're there to help you when that all goes tits up. Like when you get fired. If it was an illegal firing then the union can pursue legal means (with a much larger war-chest than you have) to either reinstate you, or, ensure you are paid all due severance payments.

  - If a group of you at work (who are all union members) are unhappy then the union will take note and with the will of the members (unions often vote before taking action like this) will pursue industrial action like holding a strike. This group mentality may sound a bit weird to you guys over there in the US, but it's actually a wonderful thing: people looking out for each other, people supporting each other, and being part of a community.

  - In case it wasn't obvious, union membership levies a small fee each year (usually a few hundred dollars, but it varies widely) to help fund its operation.

So I hope that's a better picture about unions and how they work. Are they perfect? Of course not, and they can become too powerful for their own good. And, it would be pretty frustrating have a problem, and to be a member of a union, but not receive any support from it. But to say that "all unions are bad" is a ridiculous overreaction.

In my opinion: anyone slating unions either doesn't know what they are, or, is actively against them since an organised and informed workforce can demand (shock, horror) better working conditions and higher wages.

For the rest of you, how's that clause in your contract prohibiting you from EVEN TALKING about your wage with other workers? Just stop and think about that for a fucking second. You guys are being fucked and you don't even know it. Where's this magical free speech you keep banging on about?

You know what it is? I've actually worked for a few companies in the US and I've been there, at ground zero, when someone has been instantly fired (typically illegal in Australia) and frog-marched out of the building. During the coffee break everyone was up in arms, shocked, and ranting about how unfair it was. Then, HR held the meeting in the afternoon to "debrief" and every person there clammed up tighter than a nun's bum. It was a fucking joke. No one was prepared to say a word. I stepped up and chewed out HR, chewed out the boss, and told them all they were a pack of pussies. But what I didn't realise at the time was that everyone was terrified of being fired. And I think the number one reason for that was the health care situation in the US. You guys are slaves to that system and until you pull your heads out of your arses and sort out the health care, then changes to workers rights and employment conditions will just be icing on a turd.
 

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop spouting bullshit.

This is how unions work.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

Okay, so long as you admit that you're irrational on the subject and simply want unions for their own sake.

If you actually think unions are utterly blameless and have a completely undeserved bad reputation then fine. Live in that fantasy world.

Everyone I know that has any contact with unions has revealed only corruption, coercion, and theivery.

Am I saying they're utterly without value? Of course not. Against the worst sorts of businesses and employers they are often the last resort. What is more, they are a reasonable response to the plight of unskilled labor.

However, they serve no utility for skilled labor. Which is in large part why they're in rapid decline. Because most of the positions unions would otherwise have represented are increasingly skilled labor. If you can go anywhere and get people to fight over your contract then why do you need a union?

You need a union when you're easily replaceable and have no skills that are particularly rare.

If you're a low level IT drone then maybe you need a union. But if you're much of a step above that then you don't.

As to what the tech companies did in this case... its clearly fraud and I agree that people should go to jail for it.

They won't and this union talk not only will not accomplish that but I can guarantee you that most of the people you presume to include in the union will fight against you to avoid being represented by you.

The problem here is that the unions often do not have the interests of the workers in mind. They are often mostly concerned with the union itself. And that often means workers get hurt or just as bad the industry that the workers supply with labor is damaged.

What good is it to auto workers for example if the auto companies go out of business? You want to call that win?

the only places unions are doing well is in government. And only there because they can draw upon tax dollars to subsidize their excesses. Even so, many towns have gone totally bankrupt because the compensations became excessive. And that isn't compensations just to the mayor or whatever but rather blanket compensations to everyone.

You want me to tell you what a city sanitation worker makes in many cities? You want to pretend that we couldn't find someone else to do that job for a lot less? And who pays for it? Everyone.

That is what your unions are doing these days. And while some might be insane enough to want to spread that rot around... you will find extreme resistance in the tech industry against the idea.

No one trusts you. We've seen what your ideology has done everywhere it has been given free reign and everyone with a clue wants nothing to do with you.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

I disagree that the interests of the union are absolutely and without reservation the interests of the worker. We have many situations in which a given union will engage in behavior that either harms a portion of the labor pool merely to serve the interests of the union leadership or when the union does something that helps often the senior union members while utterly destroying the younger union members.

I understand quite clearly how unions are SUPPOSED to work.

What you don't seem to grasp is that you do not live everywhere or have knowledge of every place on earth.

I will not presume to tell you how unions work in Australia. You could all be hoping around on Kangaroos for all I know. But in the US, unions are often intensely political organizations that often belong to larger political coalitions. They serve as a source of revenue, labor, and political power for those coalitions. The notion being that there is reciprocity between the two and the unions will get something they want in return for the money, time, and influence.

However, politicians only invest political capital in you when they think they might lose you. Often as not, unions become linked to a given political faction and can't really switch sides if they don't get what they want. They create enemies and that binds them to allies that might not have done anything for them in a long time.

Rather then serving the workers or the unions or the industries, the consequence is to polarize populations and make controversial something that otherwise might not have been controversial. It makes everything adversarial. And often unions and the workers and the industries will suffer as part of regular political quid pro quo gamesmanship. You hurt me yesterday so I'm going to hurt you today.

This means the unions have to protect themselves by getting even more involved... raising dues... increasing political action... and the idea is that whomever you're fighting will break before you do.

Well, what tends to happen over time is that whole industries get turned into scarred battlefields.

Look at the once great city of Detroit.

That is what unions do in the US.

I have no patience for little fools elsewhere in the world that think they know everything about everywhere. You know something about where you live. Congratulations. You don't know much of anything about where we live. Presuming otherwise is merely hubris.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the ACM is too busy shilling for the tech companies.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

What makes you think you'd even know bullshit if you saw it, you half educated cybermonkey?

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

That is what unions do in the US.

No, that's what CEOs do in the US.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

Okay, so long as you admit that you're irrational on the subject and simply want unions for their own sake.

I never said I wanted them. You are making up shit. Why?

If you actually think unions are utterly blameless and have a completely undeserved bad reputation then fine. Live in that fantasy world.

I never said they were blameless. Why are you lying again? It's not like people can scroll up and see that I never said what you are lying about.

anti-union = lying asshole. I couldn't even get past your second sentence without giving up from the number of lies you've told.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

I'm not sure how that's relevant to my post.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

Right, because industry is collapsing everywhere in the US...

Oh wait, no it isn't... its just collapsed in places the unions dominate.

I really have no patience for this level of blindness. You want to sign a suicide pact with your ideology?

Go for it. Just leave my name off the list. Your foolishness has destroyed everything its touched. What little growth we have at this point is only found where fools like you have no sway at all.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

Why do you hold the CEO's blameless for signing the contracts that doomed their companies?

Your blindness is more complete than mine. You have the suicide pact with corporations to rape and pillage.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

You've described a rather terrible arrangement for what you call a "union" compared to other parts of the world. Can I suggest that you stop calling it a union when it isn't one? Or, come up with a new name for what I'm calling a union and get on with that? There's no need to be a slave to anything, whether its your employer or a "union". The basic concept of collective bargaining that I have described works. I know it works because I've been a part of it on all sides (employee, union rep, and employer) and it's an awesome force to improve working conditions.

You can start by not signing another contract that forbids you from discussing your pay with fellow employees. Just that one step down the path towards improving workers rights may be enough for you to see the strength that comes from many united to a common cause.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha, nice one. I know BS when I hear it.

Though, in your defence, my original post suffered a pretty thorough rebuttal. It seems that there's a lot of confusion over what a "union" is in the US compared to other parts of the world. I think this is where a lot of the crazy differences of opinions are coming from in this thread.

  - The rest of the world sees a union as a positive force for employee's rights. This is borne out by many first hand experiences with them, and the fact that they exist, are widespread and are supported.

  - The US sees a "union" as an evil force that destroys companies and is maligned by political ideology. This is borne out by the many comments in this thread to this effect.

I suggest that most American's are misusing the word "union" in the same way that they misuse the word "communism".

I really pity workers in the US, where the entire system has you by the balls. You guys are fucked.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[mjwalshe]

sorry the only people that work for the Union are the full-time officers?

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

You seriously want to play semantic games with me?

Here is the point which you're not getting.

You do not live here. You do not understand what we deal with. You do not know our history. You do not know what we are talking about.

Now if I were start lecturing YOU on union in Australia, I think you'd feel that was a bit silly. Wouldn't you?

In the United States, we have unions. They have a history. We know them better then you ever will.

They have earned a bad reputation for certain types of behavior.

You want to talk about how they could be good if they didn't do the bad things? Well sure... any bad thing would be fine if it didn't do the bad things. Genius observation there.

The point is that in the US, we have a lot of unions that have done bad things. So many people are not going to be very receptive to expanding their power.

END OF STORY.

Good day, sir.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

Sure. Just so long as you stop calling kings, "kings" if they do bad things in certain areas of the world. After all, kings sounds like a nice word. Really only good rulers should be allowed to call themselves kings.

And we might as well rename countries or nations that do bad things something besides countries or nations.

And lets do that with world leaders. After all, not all world leaders are bad. But if we call both good and bad world leaders the same name its confusing... right?

All we have to do is get the bad unions in the US to agree with you and stop calling themselves unions.

As soon as that is accomplished, I'd be happy to stop calling them unions.

Until then, their actions reflect upon the whole institution just as any other associated actor reflects upon its peers.

To suggest otherwise is render oneself absurd.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[Karmashock]

A fair number of them only signed those contracts because they really didn't have a choice.

That is supposed to be one the good things about unions. Leverage.

Well, with leverage comes responsibility. If you force companies to comply with your rules then you should be judged for the consequences.

Often as not, they're also compelled by law to obey the unions. The department of labor was set up largely to make the unions even more powerful which had the disastrous results of turning America's manufacturing centers into "the rust belt".

Do I hold the CEO's blameless? No. They could have escaped the trap in much the same way a trapped animal can chew its own arm off to escape. I'd much rather they had done that because it would have been better for the country in the long run if the unions had been resisted more absolutely to the point of corporate destruction. But corporations aren't built like that. They're built to make money. Not have principles or see the long term damages to cultures.

This is ultimately on us as citizens. Part of not having rulers and kings is taking responsibility. The American people collectively have screwed their own country up with a lot of this crap.

The good news is that the hostile politically active unions in the private sector are isolated, demoralized, and shrinking. There are good unions in the US. But you rarely hear about them because they're ACTUALLY concerned with their workers and their industries rather then being proxies for national political games.

I have no problem with the good unions. They are generally well liked by the industries they operate in and don't involve member dues in causes that do not involve the job and industry interests of their workers.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[russotto]

You can start by not signing another contract that forbids you from discussing your pay with fellow employees. Just that one step down the path towards improving workers rights may be enough for you to see the strength that comes from many united to a common cause.

In the US, it doesn't matter whether I sign such a contract or not. It's not valid.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[MrKaos]

I've read a lot of posts in this thread and it is amazingly clear to me that most of the posters here, who I assume are mostly from the US, simply do NOT know how a union works. I'm not sure why this would be, but I do realise that there is a lot of disinformation in the US about unions and they are not held in very high regard.

Here in Australia a union works like this:

- You are hired by your employer as normal.

- Some workplaces have compulsory union membership, which would have been previously negotiated. If you don't like it, don't take a job there. It's an interesting political debate, but at the end of the day, the compulsory union membership is to the advantage of the union which is to the advantage of the worker.

- If you enter a dispute with your employer then you can ask the union for help. AND THEY WILL. Legal aid, counselling, wage advice, negotiating. All you guys on here saying "I should be free to negotiate my own contract" well guess what: you fucking can. But with a union, they're there to help you when that all goes tits up. Like when you get fired. If it was an illegal firing then the union can pursue legal means (with a much larger war-chest than you have) to either reinstate you, or, ensure you are paid all due severance payments.

- If a group of you at work (who are all union members) are unhappy then the union will take note and with the will of the members (unions often vote before taking action like this) will pursue industrial action like holding a strike. This group mentality may sound a bit weird to you guys over there in the US, but it's actually a wonderful thing: people looking out for each other, people supporting each other, and being part of a community.

- In case it wasn't obvious, union membership levies a small fee each year (usually a few hundred dollars, but it varies widely) to help fund its operation.

So I hope that's a better picture about unions and how they work. Are they perfect? Of course not, and they can become too powerful for their own good. And, it would be pretty frustrating have a problem, and to be a member of a union, but not receive any support from it. But to say that "all unions are bad" is a ridiculous overreaction.

In my opinion: anyone slating unions either doesn't know what they are, or, is actively against them since an organised and informed workforce can demand (shock, horror) better working conditions and higher wages.

For the rest of you, how's that clause in your contract prohibiting you from EVEN TALKING about your wage with other workers? Just stop and think about that for a fucking second. You guys are being fucked and you don't even know it. Where's this magical free speech you keep banging on about?

You know what it is? I've actually worked for a few companies in the US and I've been there, at ground zero, when someone has been instantly fired (typically illegal in Australia) and frog-marched out of the building. During the coffee break everyone was up in arms, shocked, and ranting about how unfair it was. Then, HR held the meeting in the afternoon to "debrief" and every person there clammed up tighter than a nun's bum. It was a fucking joke. No one was prepared to say a word. I stepped up and chewed out HR, chewed out the boss, and told them all they were a pack of pussies. But what I didn't realise at the time was that everyone was terrified of being fired. And I think the number one reason for that was the health care situation in the US. You guys are slaves to that system and until you pull your heads out of your arses and sort out the health care, then changes to workers rights and employment conditions will just be icing on a turd.

MOD PARENT UP! Absolute gold. Plus, free association *IS* the ultimate expression of democracy

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[MrKaos]

You do not live here. You do not understand what we deal with. You do not know our history. You do not know what we are talking about.

Well your corporations operate in Australia and engage in union breaking activities that interfere with the functioning of democracy, probably based on the experiences that made unions the way they are in America today. Beleive it or not, Australia views unions as a functioning expression of democracy - and they work, so no one is lecturing you, but maybe there is something here for you to learn. After all your financial regulators were in Australia recently to learn about the checks and balaces in the Australian economy during the GFC. Perhaps the kangaroo riding, crock wrestling upside down folk may have something other than decent beer to offer.

In the United States, we have unions. They have a history. We know them better then you ever will.

It's unlikely though that you know the history of how your corporation behave outside your borders, especially when they control all of the media that influences the very opinions that you share. Australia however, continues to resist the type of corporate media ownership that limits our access to information.

They have earned a bad reputation for certain types of behavior.

I think that's unfortunate as it really illustrates that people in the US aren't participating in democracy any more than voting, which, iirc is around 17%. Now is the information you got about those unions from personal experiences or from the media outlets that are owned by the corporations that the unions are fighting against. I'm not invaldating what you are saying but I am wondering where the opinion came from.

Speaking of reputations, right now your pharmaceutical companies are lobbing to change the Australain healthcare system so that they can derive further profit from the population, including those who can least afford it. They also lobby to change labour laws in the country and have also been attempting to implement free-trade conditions that by-pass the High-court of our country. Guess which entities are fighting those activities?

The point is that in the US, we have a lot of unions that have done bad things. So many people are not going to be very receptive to expanding their power.

People are scared of the power American corporations yeild and the relentless way they pursue more power at the expense of ordinary people whose opinion of success is that 'they have enough'. This re-inforces that. Americans deserve to be treated a lot better by your corporations because it seems to me that you've lost sight of the things that made your country great in the pursuit of the dollar and, the despotism Franklin predicted is very close indeed.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

Right, because industry is collapsing everywhere in the US...

How are the steel mills in PA doing? All closed, but they didn't monoculture the place, so it doesn't show as much blight as Detroit?

Industry (large manufacture of end user products) is collapsing everywhere in the US. Apple, the most profitable manufacturer in the USA manufacturers in China. Dell did "final assembly" in the US, but all the parts were made overseas, and now they even do final assembly overseas as well.

The American makers made sure that if they went down, they'd take Detroit with them. It was a deliberate act of sabotage, used as political leverage when they wanted to make demands of the city or state. They won. They got everything they ever wanted, and still ran their companies into the ground. Unions were irrelevant to that incompetence.

But some insane people would rather blame unions than open their eyes to the corruption of Corporate America.

Re:and now we just use H-1B they don't complain

[AK Marc]

A fair number of them only signed those contracts because they really didn't have a choice.

And they treated their employees like shit so often they had no choice but to unionize. Going back to the first "they had no choice" it was the corporation that screwed it up. But yet you hold them blameless.

Toyota manufactures in the USA without UAW "interference", why? Because they don't treat their workers like shit.

The American people collectively have screwed their own country up with a lot of this crap.

"Their" not "our"? Where are you? What country do you claim as "home"?

The corporations screwed it up. They screwed it up so bad, formal aggressive criminal unions were the *only* reasonable response from the workers. Then, once the collevtive workers discussed with the collective owners on an almost even basis, the unions are to blame for every fault, and the management to "blame" for every success.

Why?

Fucking Jobs again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Colluded to pay workers less, make books more expensive (in both cases it seems to have been mostly his idea), convinced idiot consumers to prefer (and pay) form over function... And yet so many people praise him...

as one of the effected people

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda mixed feelings! On one hand, hey I'll get money from it, so cool. On the other, Americans are already VERY expensive to employ compared to equally qualified engineers from many other countries, and it's a globally competitive market. Why employ an American if you can get 4 non-Americans who went to the same universities for the price?

So already US salaries are too high, and this isn't going to help make the US more competitive among major world STEM powers.

Re:as one of the effected people

[oldhack]

Lying prick. You can help by returning your portion of money back.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other, Americans are already VERY expensive to employ compared to equally qualified engineers from many other countries, and it's a globally competitive market.

Largely because the U.S. is a first-world country with clean water, clean air, and other environmental, economic, and cultural attributes that cost money to maintain. Reducing American salaries are going to do worse than nothing to encourage them to pursue careers in the STEM fields. This is why other governments maintain protectionist policies in regards to labor - they understand their responsibilities are to their *own* citizens.

Re:as one of the effected people

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If the Americans are too expensive why would you enter a clandestine agreement to keep recruiters away from yours? Wouldn't you want the overpriced guy to be somebody else's problem? On the other side, why would your competitor be willing to offer a higher salary than you do if you are already paying too much?

This sort of agreement (especially given the legal risk involved) just wouldn't make much sense if you thought that the employees in question were already overpriced.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Anonymous Coward]

Why employ an American if you can get 4 non-Americans who went to the same universities for the price?

I call BS. You won't find people with MS CS degrees from Stanford or Berkeley working for 30-40k no matter what country they are from. You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that they go back to their home country after graduation. If they are actually worth anything, they get recruited out of school just like any american for the very same jobs at the very same salaries.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Skuld-Chan]

Oddly enough I worked at adobe as a TAM (technical account manager) - they let me go and replaced me with 7 Indian employees. The director there was pleased as punch. I heard within a year they lost every support contract I owned - and plenty were worth millions. Funny too - he still works there.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Anonymous Coward]

Because foreigners coming to America to work for the sole purpose of driving down wages is not fair to the Americans living here. I am not talking about a company moving operations offshore and hiring for those positions using offshore candidates. I don't have a strong opinion on that. The reason why the wages are high and people do not mind coming here is because they are not under the same rules or duties that Americans are. Americans are here for the long haul. Hate America all you want, I don't care. We made sacrifices many times in the past to make this country and the world what it is today. Everyone in Europe would be speaking Russian or German right now if it was not for contributions from Americans. Men and woman are still sacrificing daily. America may not be anything to you and that is fine but don't complain when you can't get in here to work for Google. Don't complain that your country is the pits and the salaries are too low and your government is repressive and poverty is too high. If there was a large scale war right now, Americans would be called up in the draft. Americans would man the factories, Americans would fight anyone who invaded this country with rifles if they had too. All of the foreigners here on work visas or illegally would leave in a fking second and run back to their own countries and be no where around. Americans do not have that choice. America is what it is because people stood up and fought for this. You can do the same in your part of the world. Nothing pisses my off more than seeing someone driving around my neighborhood in a pickup truck with an El-Salvadoran flag on the back window. If you are so proud of El-Salvador, what the hell are you doing here? You ran from there because you didn't like it and wanted out, you wanted to live in the relative safety and enjoy a standard of living that was made possible by my sacrifices and my previous countrymen sacrifices. I am responsible for my actions. I don't have a fallback country to go back and hide in if I fuck something up around here and get in trouble.
For the illegal immigrants.. As an American, can I sneak into India, El-Salvador, Japan, or any number of countries with my family and get government assistance, health care at a hospital, my kids in school, and hired somewhere to work with no passport or ID and not able to speak the native language? Would someone provide shelter and food for me and my family for a few months until I got back on my feet? Would the general population in one of those countries think it was a racist or illegal to ask me for a passport or valid ID and citizenship status if I got pulled over for a DUI in one of those countries? If I had no ID would they just release me that day and tell me to come back later for a court hearing?

Again, I don't care if you like America or not, if you think this is the most fkd up country in the world and think we are responsible for destroying the rest of the world and meddling in stuff we should not be, I respect your opinion and I feel the same on some of those things myself. On that same note, if you believe that, then why are you so willing to come here and work? It is not for the interest of America, you are doing it for yourself at American citizens expense. That is why Americans have every right to be frustrated.

Re:as one of the effected people

[GNious]

Former employer's largest customer had issues with their other vendors all outsourcing support to India, causing constant issues, and a steady stream of complaints internally.
Eventually, that employer lost that customer, with the customer complaining that they were too expensive; a new support-contract was signed, which promised to set up a support-center in India to lower the cost.

Moral of the story: Large companies cannot learn, cannot judge quality and only care about cost.

Note: I'm sure there are lots of people who are perfectly capable in India and other low-cost countries (I know there are - I've worked with some!), but when you outsource to save 75% on labor, you're not getting the most skilled people.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Anonymous Coward]

How are US salaries too high? Salaries for CEO's, doctors, and lawyers are too high. Not for expert programmers, who are equally the lifeblood of modern society.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not get a SOUL instead of arguing for your criminal employer like a cynical, morally corrupted cunt.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Osgeld]

Americans also dont shit in a open air community ditch

we get paid more cause it cost more to sustain our level of lifestyle, and as far as equally qualified engineers, the fact your calling software monkies engineers shows your level of smug

Re:as one of the effected people

[Skuld-Chan]

I'm sure there are. One thing I noticed though when they were ramping up this initiative (and I was foolishly training them) is they hated to tell anyone - "no" or "sorry thats a bug we'll fix in a patch" or "sorry thats not our issue - its a bug with the xyz driver" - they would drag these customers on for months trying various work-arounds to solve a problem - then when they did seek my advice it look me less than 15-30 minutes to deduce it was a bug - here's when we think a patch might come out.

Re:as one of the effected people

[Yebyen]

You don't get H1B permits for the whole company. You are an American company, you have to fill so many jobs with Americans, and then you are considered for H1Bs. I'm pretty sure that's how it works, you can't just fire all of the locals and staff the whole factory with H1B workers from New Delhi and Guangdong. You also have to show that you made an effort to fill those jobs with qualified Americans and none were available^w willing to work for your pittance, and even then you have a bunch of hoops. So, if all the companies want to keep their pigs from gaining too much weight, they might have to collude together to try and do it... which is of course illegal as we're seeing now.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

Settlement? What settlement? This is a prima facie Clayton Act Anti-Trust violation. Multiple felonies, with jailtime due. Amazingly, this appearently exists on paper, so everyone who negotiated or signed it should go to jail.

The Clayton Act makes organizing supplier boycotts a prohibited activity. And that's just what they have done -- organized a boycott not to hire an employee, times the collective number.

That this has not gone to a Federal Grand Jury appears more like corruption than anything else.

Did you ever look at how much money those companies donat to a certain political party and its candidates?

Apple.

Google

Do you really think Eric Holder's politicized Justice Department is going to go after Google and Apple?!?!

BWAAA HAA HAA

They're too busy screaming "RAAAACIST!!!!" at any state that tries to enforce voter eligibility, despite absolutely no evidence that requiring a valid ID depresses minority turnout (which is why a US judge just bitch-slapped the DoJ in North Carolina just today...)

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[JoeMerchant]

The Clayton Act only applies when someone applies it. If you were wronged by these people, bring suit under the Clayton Act and have at them.

Unfortunately, if you're just a bystander, or the statute of limitations has run out, or you have accepted other settlement in the matter, you can't.

Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy it or even visit because mycleanpc.com is a virus.

I agree with that judge $324 is not enough, he should add some prison time because they deserve it.

Re:Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with that judge $324 is not enough, he should add some prison time because they deserve it.

And judging from the amount of spam in this article, someone really doesn't want people reading comments from ACs tonight.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

The Clayton Act is unconstitutional, and is also nullified by the free trade treaties in place.

It's not stolen, it's traded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, freedom shouldn't be stolen. It can, however, be exchanged.

That's why government has obligation unto you, and to others.

To provide a value for the exchange of parts of your freedom.

Don't like it? Well, that's why the government has an obligation to provide you with mechanisms for you to work for change.

Just don't pretend you have absolute power over government, that would be stealing from the rest of us.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[redelm]

Some of those with jobs might have tried to leave! Most likely to escape poor supervisors.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[redelm]

Do you mean to say Standard Oil and AT&T did not donate enough? Methinks they would have.

Not quite accurate

[TiggertheMad]

Unions aren't the same a secret collusion between competitors. A better comparison would be a secret union of all tech workers that required that none of its employees take work with Apple until they raised their entry level salaries for engineers to 500k per year out of desperation. Also, unions are manipulating the invisible hand of the market, but they only exist as a result of the power that currently lies in the hands of capitol. If capitol hadn't collectively acted in a selfish and greedy fashion for the previous thousand years or so, unions would have never been formed. You could say that they are consequence of the invisible hand, but that is sort of a cop out, since any behavior related to the market (up to and including regulation) is a consequence of the market. Gotta love feedback loops.

Judge Says: Too Low

[Anonymous Coward]

(y)

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[eth1]

Settlement? What settlement? This is a prima facie Clayton Act Anti-Trust violation. Multiple felonies, with jailtime due. Amazingly, this appearently exists on paper, so everyone who negotiated or signed it should go to jail.

The Clayton Act makes organizing supplier boycotts a prohibited activity. And that's just what they have done -- organized a boycott not to hire an employee, times the collective number.

That this has not gone to a Federal Grand Jury appears more like corruption than anything else.

By that argument, everyone in a union belongs in jail, too.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[pitchpipe]

That this has not gone to a Federal Grand Jury appears more like corruption than anything else.

You're just noticing that there is corruption that goes on in favor of big business with impunity in the US? What are you, a fucking Republican?

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it matter? Corporations decide what is legal or not. What a judge says is overturned by a higher instance if enough money is poured into the case. Apple could easily execute a few hundred of its employees and get away with it.

many companies exist to hire people

[raymorris]

> It's not about who is dispensable or not, companies do not exist to hire people ...

For many years I worked for a corporation that was set up primarily for the purpose of hiring people and taking care of those employees. For the last 12 months, the company has been losing money by continuing to provide health insurance and such for employees who work fewer than 12 hours per month.

You may think that's incredibly unusual, but actually it's not because many, possibly most, corporations are set up for the purpose of hiring a very small number of people, most notably the owners. There have been many times over the last 20 years when I, as the sole shareholder, have needed to choose between making more money or doing more good for the employees and customers. I decided that money is a means to an end. The PURPOSE if making more money would be in order to better take care of the people I care about. I'd like more money because it would allow me to send my daughter to a better school. I'd like more money because it would allow me to give more to my employees and other friends. I'd like more money because it would allow me to give more to organizations such as United Way and the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Choosing between being good to people or making more money, I choose doing good because after all the whole point of more money would be to do good with it. Choosing more money would be putting the means ahead of the ends.

Re: many companies exist to hire people

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to look up the definition of 'business' in a dictionary.

Re:many companies exist to hire people

[dbIII]

the company has been losing money by continuing to provide health insurance and such for employees who work fewer than 12 hours per month.

Offtopic maybe, but one of the reasons the USA has lost film production jobs to "socialist" places like Canada and Australia is because those health insurance costs to the company do not exist. Instead there's a slight tax markup which is far less you would expect due to not having to waste a lot of cash funnelling it through insurance fat cats before it gets anywhere near the health services.

Re:many companies exist to hire people

[raymorris]

As the sentence you quoted indicated, it's inexpensive enough in the US that we continue to provide it for employees who work less than three hours per week, so ....

At the price we pay, those employees can normally see a doctor the same day rather than waiting weeks for an appointment.

Re:many companies exist to hire people

[sysrammer]

I pay lots for a PPO. I have to wait weeks for non-emergency appointments. I live in America.

Adequate Remedy

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an idea, force them to give retroactive double back pay to every tech worker who was in the company from the beginning of the conspiracy to today. That would teach them a lesson about suppressing wages. Namely don't collude unless you want to have to pay double what you tried to keep down.

Why did they settle and not take it to a jury?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like I would rather get the $9 billion. $324 million / 60,000 is around $5,400 per worker and that's before the lawyers get their cut.

fuck you joe dragon

[Anonymous Coward]

stfu about unions you cunt

Re:Uh oh...

[Hamsterdan]

Can somebody please contact his ISP? I can only hope /. has an Abuse department. When an admin contacted us concerning one of our users, we would warn/cut/close the account

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Thruen]

While I completely agree and feel a handful of people should get locked up for this, I'm no longer shocked to see laws and punishments not being applied fairly to corporations. It wasn't long ago we saw a company get away with killing three hundred people.

MOD PARENT UP

[serviscope_minor]

Flaimbait != disagree.

There is no disagree mod for a very good reason.

they exist to make products / provide services that allow the owners to make money,

No, that's not strictly speaking correct. I'm assuming you're referring to limited liability entities (LLEs). LLEs exist for the sole purpose of protecting the owner's personal assetsso that they can operate the company without personal risk.

Many of these are set up to make a profit (as are some non LLEs, like sole traders and partnerships), but by no means all of them are.

the whole point of business is to generate profit,

For profit making entities, then yes, the point is generally to make profit, for the owner. However, these are being granted special legal protections (limitation of liability). Why?

We do that for the greater good. We collectively appear to believe that profit motivates people, so providing a mechanism for companies to operate somewhat freely (i.e. with limited liability) is of net benefit to society. That's because they want to make a profit and they do that by doing useful things. On the whole.

But make no mistake: the point of limited liability companies is not profit, it's for the overall benefit of society. If that link is broken, then there is no reason for them to be given such protections. Of course, the owners are still free to pursue profit as they see fit, but why should they also have the right to do it without personal risk?

In other words, an indicidual might make a company to make a profit, but the reason LLEs exist at all is for the greater good, not for profit.

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other,

No that was a problem. Google and Apple are given amazing protections by law (limited liability), far more than exist in any naturalistic sense. It is entirely reasonable for them to also be constrained while they make use of these protections. In that way the law is completely reasonable and just and they broke it. What they did is plainly unethical.

it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

They're not though.b You can set up a little contractor business with just you as an employee pretty easily. You can do it yourself if you feel like or if, like me that stuff turns your brain to mush, you can save hassle and pay someone else to do it. The overall costs are not that high.

The main problem is that businesses have been granted unnatural rights (limitation of liability) but are not keeping to the responsibilities that those rights must require. If anything more regulation is required to keep them in line.

"hobby" has made a million dollars. Mission statem

[raymorris]

Well you can make up your own definitions of words if you want to, I guess.
My "hobby", as you call it, has brought in over a million dollars. That million has been used according to the company's mission statement.

You know, people actually write down the purpose of the company when they create it. It's called a "mission statement". You might read some sometime. I've yet to see one that says "make money". I have seen a few companies where the people apparently FORGOT their mission, forgot the reason the company was started, and started focusing on money instead. That's why you put the mission statement in prominent places - posted on the wall, on banners, etc - to remind people of why you're there lest they forget.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[drinkypoo]

By that argument, everyone in a union belongs in jail, too.

Strikes are not boycotts. You don't buy labor, you hire it. HTH, HAND.

The above poster worked in the USA

[dbIII]

The above poster worked in the USA but you probably didn't read that far before your kneejerk reaction to some "outsider" daring to suggest that things are not perfect in the USA.

As for Detroit - are you kidding? GM and Ford have to deal with far more militant unions overseas in place where they are doing a lot better than in Detroit. Considering trust fund babies like Edsel Ford as the model instead of Henry Ford was what killed Detroit. If you populate management of a large corporation with almost nothing but the members of a single college tennis club you end up with something so inbred with so little talent that failure is inevitable. Detroit is not an example of a failure of unions, capitalism or any ideology - it's the result of decades of nepotism and mismanagement.
Also we get into the really stupid bit with blaming unions. If management is unable to get it's shit together and deal with problems related to unions in an environment with very low union membership and very high unemployment then why is it seen as the fault of unions and not as mismanagement?
I've never been in a union but I've managed to notice these things. Why haven't you?

Australia. You could all be hoping around on Kangaroos for all I know

Charming. Especially with your "little fools elsewhere in the world that think they know everything about everywhere".

Somebody please mod the GP poster up so readers can see more than Karmashock's knee-jerk reaction to an informative post.

Re:The above poster worked in the USA

[Karmashock]

Except for the auto industry is doing quite well outside of Detroit. We're seeing expansion and growth while everything the unions control withers.

It doesn't matter... the militant unions are well on their way to killing themselves. And then we have only the government unions to deal with... a much bigger problem. But then some of them have gone so far as to bankrupt the cities and states they've dominated. So we'll see what happens.

I know police officers that brag about having politicians in their pockets. I know teachers that confide that they're terrified of reprisals from the local union reps over the most petty of issues. This is what happens when you empower such entities without restraint or oversight. People run wild.

Things that can't go on forever... do not. This business model is rapidly running out of time. And when it does... you'll likely propose something closer to full state socialism or something equally hilariously inept.

But then you'll be in the position of the Venezuelans as well as turning the US into a true banana republic. You see... even with total power you still need to make the system work. And it doesn't so you won't... and thus there will be shortages, brown outs, water will get cut off, whole civic institutions will collapse...

At some point, you either deal with empirical reality and set success as the first criteria. Or you're setting everyone that associates with you up for suffering.

Re:The above poster worked in the USA

[dbIII]

You need a LOT more than a few anecdotes or recycled chamber of commerce propaganda to get "empirical reality".
You also failed to address how it's possible that the Detroit situation was the fault of unions when GM and Ford are dealing successfully with far more militant unions elsewhere. It just does not make sense. It's the pointless demonization of blaming things on those who cannot shout as loud as others.

Re:The above poster worked in the USA

[Karmashock]

Its the common denominator. The rot is concentrated in union controlled areas.

Look, you want to draw this out into some sort of extended debate? It doesn't matter. The areas where your idea is applied are dying. All I have to do to win is wait.

I wish you were reasonable. But you're not. So fine.

It is people like you that force every situation to be resolved with some sort of power play because you're utterly unreasonable. Nothing short of a loaded gun against you forehead with a cocked hammer ever makes you stop.

What I want is to be left alone. What you want is to control everything. My goal might be selfish or whatever silly insult you might wish to throw at it. But its at least obtainable. Your goal... its as impossible as it is self destructive.

Re:The above poster worked in the USA

[dbIII]

Also WTF is it with the murder fantasy? That's some seriously fucked up shit that you are bullying the kids with there karmashock.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Entrope]

Those who tried to leave probably succeeded. Can you cite to a single case where this anti-poaching agreement prevented an active searcher from getting a job offer?

Sounds like a union at the other end of the scales

[clay_buster]

A better comparison would be a secret union of all tech workers that required that none of its employees take work with Apple until they raised their entry level salaries for engineers to 500k per year out of desperation.

Ignoring the secret part... Isn't that the definition of a strike? People refusing work until the hiring company caves to work policies or salaries?

Union states vs "right to work".

[clay_buster]

The grandparent's post was correct and in line with your comments about Australia. One thing that might be different is there are union states and "right to work" states. Union states require that workers be in unions for certain types of contracts. They also generally mandate that every worker in a "union shop" be a union member. This means you can't work there if you are not a member. Quit paying your dues and you can no longer be employed. "Right to work" states are the other end of the spectrum. Union membership is optional and enrollment tends to be low.

We recently had an issue where a union state and a right to work state built a bridge across a river to each other. The union state mandated that all contractors be union shops. The "right to work" state demanded that non union shops be allowed because of the cost difference. (There is also a slight cost of living difference between the two states aligned with the wage differences) I don't remember how it got worked out but construction was delayed for months.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[redelm]

Probably easy to find for the DoJ. Ask jobchangers. But not necessary. Anti-Trust law is highly unusual -- the govt does not need to prove harm, and it is much closer to "guilty until proven innocent". Just ask the oilcos.

Re:WTF? Jailtime! Boycott violates Anti-Trust

[Entrope]

Yeah, I figured you had nothing.

Standard Oil and Ma Bell were broken up because they exploited monopoly power. There's nothing remotely similar for tech employers. You claimed there was some kind of supplier boycott, I pointed out that there obviously wasn't one in the usual sense, and you fell back to "maybe this kind of harm happened, you can't prove it didn't!"

Re:"hobby" has made a million dollars. Mission sta

[Solandri]

Making more money in and of itself isn't a problem. Money is just a representation of productivity. The more productive you are for a given cost (relative to your competitors), the more money you'll make. By that token, it's in society's best interest for everyone to try to make as much money as they can. i.e. It's good to want to make more money (in a productive manner - scamming or skimming doesn't contribute any productivity). Whether you do so with a hobby or a job is irrelevant - the fact that you're making money means you're doing something productive which someone else values and is willing to pay for. (I think the AC was trying to distinguish between non-productive "hobbies" and productive "work". But what distinguishes those is productivity, not how well the employees are compensated.)

The problem comes about with how that money is distributed within a company. The owners/high-level executives have too much control over the process of wage/bonus distribution. It's like passing around a bag with money (profits), and the owners/executives get to pull as much out as they want first. Not enough is left over by the time you get to bonuses and salary increases for regular employees.

I don't know a good solution to this problem. It's one of the reasons I'm not opposed to unions despite my fiscally conservative beliefs (as long you don't make the union a monopoly, which just creates different problems). The taboo against telling others how much you make helps contribute to it though (not all countries have this taboo). Maybe if you required companies to post annual salary/bonus stats with the names redacted out? That would give individual employees a better idea where they stand, and if they should be demanding higher wages because they know they're one of the better employees but they see they're near the bottom of the pay scale. Giving regular employees stock options helps too, though I always felt the rules regarding exercising those options and what happens when you leave the company were too complex and arbitrary.

I always analyzed bonus distribution for my employees as a pie chart, so I could see which fraction of bonuses were going to managers, salaried employees, hourly employees, etc. The idea was to try to make sure the ratios of the bonuses in the pie chart were pretty close to the ratio of wages (which is also a general measure of productivity). That way it'd be pretty obvious if I or the managers were taking too much money out of the bag first, and grabbing a disproportionate share of the bonuses. (Actually I tried to bias it the other way - with non-managers getting a greater share of the bonus than the managers, who were already pretty well-paid.)

Partial truth, mostly not

[s.petry]

I felt the need to re-arrange a bit so the most severe issues are first.

The problem in USA is not that Google and Apple had agreements not to hire from each other, it's that there are so few employers at all, and that's a problem of business costs being too high thanks to government rules, taxes, regulations, litigation costs, inflation etc.

Wrong, absolutely wrong. Companies colluding to reduce employee wages is illegal and a problem. Hence the ruling and pending judgement to both reward people shafted by these illegal arrangements and punish the companies for using them.

Have you ever interviewed for either Google or Apple? I have, and their built in exclusion process ensures that they can hire only who they want when they want. If they want to save money they hire nobody local, and then claim that they need more H1B workers.

I don't take issue with the ability of a company to exclude people based on a lack of experience or knowledge, but that's not the criteria these companies are using to make exclusions. Google for example demands that you spend about a week studying various "trick questions" for their interview process. Your first phone interview will provide you a list of things to study, none of which have to pertain to the job you are interviewing for.

"trick questions" which does not test your real knowledge. It is however a great test to determine who will provide free labor without complaints.

Hiring employees becomes necessary when there is more work that can be done, where the cost of hired labour is lower than the value produced by that labour.

That part you have correct, but then it all goes downhill.

If you make labour cost too high, less of it will be bought, because the value produced by that labour may not be enough to cover the cost and to make some profit, and the whole point of business is to generate profit, otherwise it's not a business but a hobby.

Great, but why are you limiting your point on labor to only the worker bees? A CEO should make 145 million dollars a year while a worker bee makes 40K and is told they are overpaid? A manager can make a 1 million dollar bonus by eliminating 5 minimum wage employees and replacing them with 5 people making .60 an hour in a foreign country? Events similar to these happen frequently in the US. Do the math, how does this add up?

Look, I agree that the welfare state is a huge problem. That last paragraph has nothing to do with the welfare state, it has to deal with deregulation and incentives in the system to fuck people over so that you can make big bucks. Even to the point where a board will fire a CEO of a profitable company for not fucking his employees.

Who gets the money?

[RogueWarrior65]

The lawyers are going to make a yacht-load of money off of this. Will the actual plaintiffs get anything or will they get coupons for discounts on cellphone cases?

WTF? When did the strawman walk in?

[dbIII]

It is people like you that force every situation to be resolved with some sort of power play because you're utterly unreasonable. Nothing short of a loaded gun against you forehead with a cocked hammer ever makes you stop.

How about you address at least ONE of the points in the AC's post instead of going off into the far side of crazy and snide comments about "You could all be hoping around on Kangaroos for all I know"?
That way we'd have some idea of what is going on instead of seeing one side of a conversation between you and a strawman inside your own head.

BCBS, S&W

[raymorris]

Sounds like you need a better one. We've been very pleased with Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Texas for insurance and Scott and White for healthcare.
Obviously there are things that need to be improved with the entire systems of a) health insurance and especially b) health care. Given the available options (worldwide), this combination is hard to beat. If you happen to be in Texas and aren't happy with what you're getting, they are worth a look. If you aren't in Texas, and all of the options in your state suck, I'd be curious to know what causes the difference.

with you until this part, opposite of fact

[raymorris]

> The owners/high-level executives have too much control over the process of wage/bonus distribution. It's like passing around a bag with money (profits), and the owners/executives get to pull as much out as they want first.

You know of course that companies frequently lose money in one quarter or one year, and make money another year. So owners may or may not get ANY money this year. Employees get paid every month, precisely the amount they expect. That's because the money bag goes in the opposite direction. First, production employees get paid (payroll). Executives get a portion of their pay. If there's money left, executives get their bonus, which is the other half of their pay. If there's still money left, investments are made to prepare the company for the future. If there's STILL money left, owners get some, in the form of dividends. Dividends (owner's) are, by law, the very last thing that gets paid.

Pyramid scheme

[NewYork]

Every MNC is a Pyramid scheme in Globalization

$46billion TTM Can we supplement the tax code?

[Anonymous Coward]

$16billion - Aug 2014 BofA (BAC) for mortgage fraud perpetrated by forced acquisitions (Merrill Lynch and Country-Wide) Annual income $7billion
$8.9billion - Jul 2014 BNP for breaching US Sanctions in Iran, Sudan,... Annual income for BNP $6.4billion
$7billion - Jul 2014 Citigroup for mortgage fraud. Annual income $9billion
$1.6billion - Jun 2014 Credit Suisse for helping US citizens cheat on taxes
$2.3billion - USG, Chase, Citigroup for LIBOR cartel
$13billion - Oct 2013 JPMorgan Chase for mortgage fraud and market manipulation Annual Income $15billion
$1.9billion - Dec 2012 HSBC for money laundering
$1.5billion - Dec 2012 UBS for one count of wire fraud

Surely human ingenuity will devise new ways to abuse power to keep the greed tax flowing.
If not, the fading from memory of one year of lost profits will provide for repeat performances every eight to twelve years.

Shortage propaganda versus wages

[Lonewolf666]

If you don't think there is a shortage of software developers in the US, why are developers in the US paid so much more than ones in Europe?

Also, there is no hard threshold to define an "actual" shortage when you're talking about such a large job market.

Curiously, European employers (in Germany in particular) are complaining about a "shortage" too and have lobbied with some success for easier immigration of qualified workers. It looks quite similar to the discussion and critique about H-1B workers in the USA, see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_program.

Personally, I think a "shortage" can best be detected from the development of wages, relative to other fields where the necessary education is similarly difficult and time consuming. For instance, does the average engineer earn significantly more than the average M.D., lawyer or business manager?

For Germany, AFAIK the answer is "no" and the complaints about a "shortage" are mostly propaganda. I'm not as familiar with the US labor market but the anecdotical evidence I pick up here and there tends to say "no" as well.

Re:Shortage propaganda versus wages

[Entrope]

In the US, a typical manager earns some amount more than the people they manage. As a result, the average software engineer earns significantly more than the average non-engineering manager, and more than many engineering managers.

And in the US, doctors and lawyers are not comparable to software developers for two main reasons: they have significant legal duties towards their clients (and must carry malpractice insurance as a result), and it is a serious crime to practice medicine or law without a license (which is granted by the people already in the field). Doctors and lawyers typically have further education, as well, which is not required for software developers. We also hear chronic complaints about doctor shortages, too -- but thankfully none for lawyers :) The kind of doctors with the worst shortages are "primary care" doctors, rather than specialists and surgeons, who also make much less money than the specialists, and I think in the same neighborhood as software developers.