Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
Damn right it's too low! .. 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 .. .. they will pay attention if you spray when their eye's move away..
.
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
.
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
.
Thank them one for me!
Doctors and Lawyers have large lobbying bodies (AMA and ABA, respectively) that represent their interests. Does a comparably large organization exist for Programmers?
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.
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.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
> 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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.