
Silicon Valley workers may pursue collusion case as group - ForHackernews
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/15/siliconvalley-collusion-lawsuit-idUSL2N0KP02P20140115
======
crazygringo
Not that I'm disagreeing with this outcome at all...

But if agreeing not to poach is collusion and conspiracy...

Then how is it that it's legal for workers to form unions and strike? Isn't
that just as much "collusion and conspiracy" from the other side?

I mean heck, consumers organizing to boycott a product is a kind of
"collusion" and "conspiracy" as well that is just as arguably "anti-market".

Is there anyone who can explain how the law differentiates between them? I
have zero legal background/knowledge of these things...

Edit: To be clear, I think unions can be great things, and think the anti-
poaching agreements are bad... I'm just trying to figure out a way to
reconcile these in my mind! :)

~~~
zedshaw
Yes, if you believe that you can reduce any use of a word down to its most
abstract concept giving you the ability to equate anything to anything else.
By those standards collusion is also a tomato, a pair of shoes, and my left
ear. Very Zen.

But, given nobody else thinks this way, then no, unions are not a conspiracy.
A conspiracy is pretty much defined as such when everyone involved constantly
tells each other "don't tell anyone" which is what these jackasses did (go
read the emails). Unions are _very_ public about going on strike and have big
votes on it, thus not a conspiracy. Same with consumers organizing a strike,
or just about everything you came up with.

Collusion is also not bad unless it's illegal, and what we've decided in the
US is that gigantic billion dollar companies are not allowed to get together
and screw over poor work slobs who make maybe $100k/year with their collective
MegaCorp trillion dollar might. In fact, any decent human being would be
enraged at a giant corporation using its power to smash a little guy to make a
few thousand more per employee a year.

~~~
thaumasiotes
There are many, many problems here.

> Collusion is also not bad unless it's illegal

Did it ever occur to you that laws might be passed despite those same laws not
being beneficial? In your model of the world, where legal actions are all, by
definition, good, how would legislators decide whether or not to enact a
prospective law? If we repealed all our antitrust legislation, can I assume
you would agree that employer collusion to hold down wages used to be bad, but
was now good?

> no, unions are not a conspiracy. A conspiracy is pretty much defined as such
> when everyone involved constantly tells each other "don't tell anyone"

I have to agree with the bare semantics here, but... who's alleging that the
harm from a bunch of companies secretly agreeing to hold down wages comes,
entirely and only, from the fact that the agreement is secret? They do it in
secret _because it 's illegal_, and your parent is wondering why employees are
legally allowed to do openly what employers must do in secret. Why is there
supposed to be a difference? Is there a justification for punishing the
companies, _other_ than the fact that their conduct is illegal?

Nothing can be bad _because_ it's illegal; belief following that reasoning is
religious, not valid.

~~~
zedshaw
Oooh boy, I get to PG you and point you at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
as my answer for your first comment. Breaks down like this: I said this law is
right. You then say I'm saying all laws are by definition good and then attack
that restatement of my position, which isn't what I said.

Your disagreement on semantics is just plain wrong. If the law they broke is a
"conspiracy" law, then the fundamental difference between what these companies
did and what a union does is the "secret" part of a conspiracy. It's not a
conspiracy if everyone knows about it. In addition, them going around warning
each other to keep it secret is a direct admission of guilt that they knew it
was illegal. Some of the emails even say it's illegal, so they knew it was
illegal and _conspired_ to do it anyway. Get it? That's a conspiracy.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I honestly don't know how to respond to this. Here are some of my thoughts.

> I said this law is right.

Here are your words: "Collusion is [...] not bad unless it's illegal, and what
we've decided in the US is [...]". Looking at this, and the rest of the
comment, I can see that:

1\. You can imagine US collusion law being in a state other than what it is
("what we've decided in the US is [...]").

2\. The only argument you present is that the conduct described is illegal.

3\. You specifically acknowledge that in some sense, the fact that the conduct
described is illegal _is a coincidence_ (in modal logic, it is not a necessary
truth); it's how the US decided to handle the law.

As the existence of the law is the only argument you presented for the badness
of the conduct, I conclude that you are arguing that the conduct is bad
_because_ the law prohibits it.

The alternative, that you are asserting with no justification that the conduct
is bad, and also remarking, apropos of nothing, that the law prohibits it,
violates Grice's maxim of relevance. It also violates the structure of what
you said, which was a quite clear statement that if the law does not prohibit
collusion, that collusion cannot be bad.

I will happily license you to restrict my comment to the domain of collusion;
I'm willing to believe that you did not intend your audience to infer
"assassination is not bad unless it's illegal" from "collusion is not bad
unless it's illegal". But we are discussing collusion, and everything I said
applies there. The example I picked, antitrust law, is specifically related to
it, and is even specifically the main topic of the post. So: if the US
repealed all its antitrust laws, can I assume you would agree that any
collusion formerly prohibited by them was now unobjectionable? If not, would
you like to revise your comment?

Finally:

> Your disagreement on semantics is just plain wrong.

Compare to my comment, "I have to agree with the bare semantics here".

> If the law they broke is a "conspiracy" law, then the fundamental difference
> between what these companies did and what a union does is the "secret" part
> of a conspiracy.

There is no blanket "conspiracy" law in the US; it would violate the freedom
of assembly. For conspiracy to be criminal conduct, the object of the
conspiracy needs to be illegal. Therefore, the fundamental difference, as I
pointed out before, is not that the companies acted secretly and unions act in
the open. If the companies acted in the open, that would still be illegal. The
question you're dismissing is, why?

~~~
beedogs
Jesus Christ. Just stop posting.

~~~
nitrogen
Instead of lowering SNR with a rude comment, just stop reading.

------
dmazin
That's interesting. A company may see it as only fair not to poach, but in the
eyes of employees it's (rightly) collusion.

On that note, "Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs threatened to hit Palm with patent
litigation if the company did not stop poaching valuable employees"[1] is not
ethically defensible.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/angry-over-employee-
poa...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/angry-over-employee-poaching-
steve-jobs-threatened-palm-with-patent-suit/)

~~~
sdoowpilihp
It wasn't about being fair on the companies part; not poaching each others
employees was a form of cost control.

~~~
dmazin
What I'm saying is that while it may seem wrong to poach employees, employers
have a greater duty to the workforce than to other companies, ethically.

~~~
chii
> employers have a greater duty

employers have no duty, but that of making profit. Don't misplace your
loyalty, because employers certainly don't place theirs in you (the
emoployee).

~~~
vacri
Do non-profits have no duty at all?

------
employee
(google employee here)

One thing I have always wondered is if the raises Google employees received in
2011 were a result of the illegal collusion being uncovered and therefore no
longer depressing salaries. The timing seems about right.

For reference: [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-
raise-2010-1...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-
raise-2010-11)

(It was much more than 10% by the way, and by far the biggest raise I've ever
received in my career)

It's beyond dispute that the raises were given for competitive reasons. (No,
we didn't all get a raise because we were doing such a great job.) There was
an uptick in Googlers leaving.

I suppose some of it had to do with Facebook, which was NOT part of the
collusion. But I wonder how related the two events are, and if this issue will
come up in a future class action lawsuit.

It's a pretty unprecedented event to give _all_ employees at an enormous
company such a big raise. A sudden shift in the job market caused by this
defunct agreement could explain it.

------
blazespin
This collusion was frankly beyond obscene and should be totally illegal. Like
non compete clauses, they're put in place so corporations are basically given
a way to work together to oppress their employees. It's just as bad as Unions,
but for corporations.

------
redwood
The problem with laws like this is they're very difficult to prove because you
can create fairly arbitrary criteria for what you _want_ in an employee and
claim that one of those things you want is for them not to have been
significantly molded by a different large bureaucratic entity with its own
culture and processes.

It's trivial to prove this is going on, but what I mean is: difficult to reach
the legal burden of proof of collusion.

Also ultimately a law suit like this will send $$$ -> lawyers more than anyone
else.

~~~
mikeyouse
> The problem with laws like this is they're very difficult to prove

Not when the DOJ has subpoena power.

After a Google recruiter reached out to an Apple engineer, Steve Jobs in an
email to Eric Schmidt:

    
    
        "I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would
        stop doing this,"
    

Schmidt, forwarding that email to his team:

    
    
        "Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?"
    

Google's Staffing Director:

    
    
        "[The recruiter who contacted the Apple Employee] will be terminated within
        the hour."
    
        "Please extend my apologies as appropriate to Steve Jobs."
    

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-apple-
lawsuit-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-apple-lawsuit-
idUSTRE80Q27420120127)

------
smtddr
Hmm... so while we have the whole gentrification thing going on, those on the
outside of tech are watching us complain that maybe we don't get paid enough.
Imagine what the outside-of-tech people think when reading this article. The
recession and/or effects of it isn't over for a lot of them. If there was an
article about bank or oil company execs complaining that they don't get enough
money we'd probably all be exploding with rage.

Just saying....

~~~
yetanotherphd
Only people who don't understand that wages come from the value a person
produces. Lawyers, doctors, professional athletes, also get high wages and are
entitled to them. If you want to adjust income inequality you have to do it
across the board, through taxation, not by shaming individual industries.

We get paid so much because we produce that much value. But if these
allegations are true, we aren't getting paid enough.

~~~
smtddr
So... what do you think about the salaries of teachers in public schools?

Also, I bet bank & oil execs believe they make the world-go-round and add a
lot of value too. After all, banks & oil touches pretty much all our lives as
much as computers do, right?

~~~
pravda
> So... what do you think about the salaries of teachers in public schools?

Well, it varies by region. There are some areas where teachers get $1,000/day
compensation packages. But they don't really _earn_ that money, they just use
state violence to take it from people who earned it.

~~~
vdaniuk
Pravda? I don't think so. Could you please point to proof that there are areas
where teachers get $1000/day compensation?

~~~
pravda
Well...Westchester New York. A tony suburb of NYC.

Teachers work about 186 days a year, so the magic number we have to get to is
$186K.

Let's say the high school gym teacher. Late 30s, been there for 15 years. Base
salary, $125K.

Health benefit package worth $18K a year. Pension benefits worth maybe $40K a
year.

He also gets $7K in SS taxes paid, and other assorted taxes we'll ignore.

125+18+40+7 = $190k

(I suppose to be fair we must deduct union dues from the total. I have no idea
how much union dues are.)

------
lowglow
Literally so much collusion in the valley it's insane. Maybe I should write an
article about it.

~~~
dclowd9901
Might want to brush up on your use of "literally" first.

~~~
rrreese
Lets consult the Oxford English Dictionary:
[http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109061?redirectedFrom=literall...](http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109061?redirectedFrom=literally#eid)

"c. colloq. Used to indicate that some (freq. conventional) metaphorical or
hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense:
‘virtually, as good as’; (also) ‘completely, utterly, absolutely’. Now one of
the most common uses, although often considered irregular in standard English
since it reverses the original sense of literally (‘not figuratively or
metaphorically’)."

Of note the use by Twain: "1876 ‘M. Twain’ Adventures Tom Sawyer ii. 20 And
when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy
in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth."

You may not like this situation but it is way too late to complain about it.

------
ChuckMcM
Its funny for me because on the start-up side of things it feels like Apple,
Google, and Facebook are pushing up wages by offering up huge salaries to
entice everyone to go there.

~~~
randomdata
That's what is supposed to happen. Supply and demand.

------
mullingitover
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in
some contrivance to raise prices." \- Adam Smith

------
puppetmaster3
The software engineers salaries are way to low and artificially so, due to
lack of free working market.

Compare to how much you pay for a lawyer per hour. And lawyer do not have to
train on the this years tech over and over. And they don't have to think hard
for full day.

------
arikrak
They didn't say they wouldn't hire each other's employees, just they wouldn't
actively recruit top talent from each other. I don't see what's wrong with
that. Top employees can still apply on their own.

~~~
mullingitover
> They didn't say they wouldn't hire each other's employees, just they
> wouldn't actively recruit top talent from each other.

You've just described collusion. They colluded to prevent the wages of their
top talent from being boosted by the normal process of competition in the
labor market. Sure it's not like they stole money directly out of their star
employees' pockets, but in the end the effect was the same.

~~~
arikrak
One motive for it was so they could work together on projects without worrying
about the employees getting poached. It doesn't seem like such a clear-cut
wrong.

~~~
mullingitover
How would you feel if you found out that your employer's competitor really
wanted to hire you, and would've willingly _tripled_ your salary, but your
manager had a talk with the competition and they made a backroom no-poach
deal?

------
miguelindurain
Do any of those workers still work for those companies, or did they have to
quit before suing ?

------
ps4fanboy
It is a shame Steve Jobs isnt alive to answer for his part in this.

~~~
vinceguidry
I'd prefer him alive too, so he can keep making amazing products.

