I agree with you, but it's always easier to go after a centralized target who is doing a thing at scale. Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?
I remember Apple and Google did. Was there a broader conspiracy?
> got a measly 50 million dollar fine
This $415mm settlement [1]? Its suit covered ”almost 65,000 employees who worked for the seven companies between 2005 and 2010.” The fine was thus about $6,400 per covered employee (about $8k in 2022 dollars). The alleged cut to “potential employee compensation [was] 10 percent to 15 percent” [2]. That didn’t pertain to every single employee, so the actual cost per violation is higher. That doesn’t seem egregiously low.
> I remember Apple and Google did. Was there a broader conspiracy?
I wrote FAANG cause I didn't remember all involved, which was my bad. It was Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay that got caught in the anti trust suit.
Enough big players to seriously affect job opportunities and labour costs from rising.
> This $415mm settlement [1]?
That was the latest judge sentence, which I hadn't heard of, I can ammend my previous comment. The original sentences, affecting mostly the smaller players like Pixar where much smaller while the Apple and Google one kept being pushed back. 400 million is still quite low in exchange for a 5 year long wage freeze essentially as moving jobs is the best way to increase your salary.
The toal pay seems to be lower, 3,400 for Pixar, intuit and lucasfilm employees and only 5,770 for apple and google employees. Over a 5 year period thats a pretty low salary raise.
Considering a job change every 2 years can end up with almost 100% salary difference over a decade. That means in the 5 years, the salary raises saved the company up to 50% in salary costs.
With the headcount of both of those companies and their average salary. Even if the percentage of workers who did not move between companies, I would argue 400 million is still low.
I am also gonna ignore lawyer fees which are usually the only winners on such big lawsuits
If there average payout is 5,770 per employee and the average salary jump while changing jobs is 10-20%.
The math is pretty in favour of having a wage conspiracy, thats without even considering the cost of not being caught.
Chance of being caught * average salary * cost of poaching * average salary rise due to poaching * number of employees / fine
Maybe my napkin math is wrong but the chance of being caught has to be very high and the average salary or number of employees very low for it to make any sense.
And being google and apple in california, the employee and salary is not gonna be low...
My industry got it pretty bad too. California passed Prop 11, which wiped out a wage theft lawsuit, and also ensured that we do not get to clock out for meal breaks.
