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

Posted by timothy on from the sticking-it-to-the-men dept.

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.

10 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. And yet by Spy+Handler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:And yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. Re:And yet by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:And yet by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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.

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    4. Re:And yet by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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  2. Hang them by balls .. by MonsterMasher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

  3. Re:as one of the effected people by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:In other words... by nolife · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  5. many companies exist to hire people by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > 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.

    1. Re:many companies exist to hire people by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.