Google, Apple, Intel – All Getting Sued For Screwing The Workers
YOU may or may not worry very much about some of the richest workers on the planet getting screwed over by the companies they work for. We tend to worry more about the poor getting so screwed. But Google, Apple, Intel and a number of other big Silicon Valley firms are getting sued by their engineers for the way in which they’ve screwed them over in recent years.
But next month, Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe will be in the dock to face the same opponent.
A group of technology executives is suing the companies for alleged collusion to suppress their wages, after they signed a series of “no-poach” pacts barring them from recruiting each other’s staff.
The companies, whose collective value tops $890bn (£530bn), could be forced to pay handsomely to compensate them for the losses, but they are likely to be far more worried about the details the case will expose.
The actual amount being demanded is $9 billion which is real money even in that time and place.
The allegation is that all of these large tech companies (Facebook declined to join, Microsoft isn’t in the right geographic area to be affected) decided that they weren’t going to try and hire engineers from each other. To the point that they threatened to, and did, fire recruiters who even made phone calls to engineers working for those companies. This is clearly and obviously illegal: it’s collusion, the creation of a cartel. For what refusing tp hire from another company does is mean that the engineer can’t negotiate a better wage with the current employer by threatening to move to the next one just down the road.
It’s actually what Marx warned about in his description of “monopoly capitalism”. It’s really very naughty. And there’s not much of a defence available to the companies either. Because they’ve all already admitted they did this in a criminal investigation run by the Feds. What we’ve got here is the civil case about it, deciding how much those engineers should get for having been screwed over.
Essentially those big companies, Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, they’re just going to have to bend over and hold the pot of lube for the court….
Posted: 22nd, April 2014 | In: Money, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
