from the do-no-evil-just-like-all-the-others dept.
Anonymous Coward writes:
PandoDaily is reporting an illegal agreement between seven tech giants, including Apple, Google, and Intel, to suppress wages for tens of thousands of tech employees. From the article:
According to multiple sources familiar with the case, several of these newly named companies were also subpoenaed by the DOJ for their investigation. A spokesperson for Ask.com confirmed that in 2009-10 the company was investigated by the DOJ, and agreed to cooperate fully with that investigation. Other companies confirmed off the record that they too had been subpoenaed around the same time.
Although the Department ultimately decided to focus its attention on just Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar, the emails and memos clearly name dozens more companies which, at least as far as Google and Apple executives were concerned, formed part of their wage-fixing cartel."
Related Stories
Anonymous Coward writes:
In a follow up to our story a few days ago, Newly unsealed documents from Google and Apple further prove their complicity in a secret illegal agreement to limit employees' careers and wages. Some background on this cartel is available in another article covering the US Department of Justice investigation into this matter earlier this week. When these companies were caught red-handed, blatantly breaking the law, the US government intervened on workers' behalf by asking the companies to, in effect, "please stop doing this," but the proposed settlement will only "be in effect" for the next five years.
Go justice!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by SuggestiveLanguage on Monday March 24 2014, @04:10PM
Corporate behemoths and well-heeled start-ups already have a massive leveraging of legal [investors.com], human resource management [cbsnews.com], accounting [go.com] and political [murthy.com] resources over individual employees, and now they are forming a cartel to artificially restrict the labor market. At what point does it become necessary to provide a unified front with the numbers and clout to check unlimited potential for abusive and exploitative behavior?
(Score: 3, Informative) by carguy on Monday March 24 2014, @04:58PM
Plenty of prior experience in other industries to look back on.
At one time Akron Ohio was headquarters for most of the major rubber and tire companies. Anyone involved in rubber compounding (chemistry, mixing, etc) or trade secret tire design was essentially locked into a career at one company. I'm not sure if it ever became public or part of a legal action, but the companies had an agreement that they would not cross hire or recruit at a premium...and the employees knew it.
Not sure of the timing, but this all fell apart when the tire companies were attacked by raiders, bought and/or merged. Now Akron has a bunch of small R&D operations owned by many international tire companies. They hire experienced engineers and chemists that have been laid off by the (former) big companies.
(Score: 1) by Tork on Monday March 24 2014, @04:12PM
Slashdolt logic: 1600 x 1200 > 1920 x 1200
(Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Monday March 24 2014, @04:15PM
Why shouldn't companies pay the going rate to compete in the open marketplace?
(Score: 1) by Tork on Monday March 24 2014, @04:19PM
Slashdolt logic: 1600 x 1200 > 1920 x 1200
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @04:23PM
Absolutely nothing.
And that's how it should be.
(Score: 1) by Tork on Monday March 24 2014, @04:28PM
"And that's how it should be."
Why?
Slashdolt logic: 1600 x 1200 > 1920 x 1200
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday March 24 2014, @05:40PM
Freedom.
If I'm working for a small startup in its 2nd round of funding and making 60k per year I should be able to decide if Google's offer of 75k per year to work for them is in my best interests.
Any company should be able to offer me anything at any time WRT to offers for work. It seems downright Un-American to tell Google it can't make me an offer while a different startup can make me an offer for just a little bit more.
This is about something different and nearly opposite. Dozens of companies that require highly skilled talent have agreed to not tender any offers to a skilled worker that has worked for this consortium of corruption before.
People figure this out too, but might have no way to prove it. The result is a skilled worker struggling to find work for 60k per year when in a market free of this collusion might find the worker being offered 80k.
Just one more example of what happens when you let the disease of the Shareholder take root and corporations and execs spend most of their waking moments trying to figure out how to extract more money for them, and as long as they can couch it in terms of the Shareholder it becomes correct and possible.
While the DOJ might not send anyone to prison (which they should), I fully support multi-billion dollar fines per corporation involved with money set aside for workers to be able to claim a portion for the years they worked.
(Score: 1) by guises on Tuesday March 25 2014, @09:52AM
It's not at all un-American. We as a country decided that anti-trust laws were something that we wanted to have and what you're describing - Google shutting down a smaller competitor by leveraging their wealth and market position.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrbluze on Monday March 24 2014, @04:28PM
Only if at the same time no one goes and bails out the too-big-to-fails. There is far too much corporate socialism going on in the so-called capitalist US. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 1) by Subsentient on Monday March 24 2014, @11:23PM
I like my socialism like I like my kernels -- vanilla.