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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Silicon Valley's most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers' wages
Source: Pando Daily
In early 2005, as demand for Silicon Valley engineers began booming, Apples Steve Jobs sealed a secret and illegal pact with Googles Eric Schmidt to artificially push their workers wages lower by agreeing not to recruit each others employees, sharing wage scale information, and punishing violators. On February 27, 2005, Bill Campbell, a member of Apples board of directors and senior advisor to Google, emailed Jobs to confirm that Eric Schmidt got directly involved and firmly stopped all efforts to recruit anyone from Apple.
Later that year, Schmidt instructed his Sr VP for Business Operation Shona Brown to keep the pact a secret and only share information verbally, since I dont want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?
These secret conversations and agreements between some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley were first exposed in a Department of Justice antitrust investigation launched by the Obama Administration in 2010. That DOJ suit became the basis of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of over 100,000 tech employees whose wages were artificially lowered an estimated $9 billion effectively stolen by the high-flying companies from their workers to pad company earnings in the second half of the 2000s. Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied attempts by Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe to have the lawsuit tossed, and gave final approval for the class action suit to go forward. A jury trial date has been set for May 27 in San Jose, before US District Court judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the Samsung-Apple patent suit.
... The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar (now owned by Disney) are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as an overarching conspiracy in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, and at times it reads like something lifted straight out of the robber baron era that produced those laws. Todays inequality crisis is Americas worst on record since statistics were first recorded a hundred years ago the only comparison would be to the era of the railroad tycoons in the late 19th century.
Read more: http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)and add to this the H1B Visa scam among technology workers....
Triana
(22,666 posts)...because I want to spread this far and wide!
El_Johns
(1,805 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)They have lost their reputation for 'do not harm' some time ago. This business model hurt our workers and our ability to keep up with world competition. They are very powerful now but with every revelation the tide appears to be turning worldwide.
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)just eliminate the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act. Problem solved!
indepat
(20,899 posts)While Steve Jobs can't be put in jail, the remaining co-conspirators surely can.