{"id":8757,"date":"2014-04-27T15:31:27","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T19:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=8757"},"modified":"2021-06-18T07:07:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T11:07:23","slug":"applegoogle-hiring-lawsuit-settled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/27\/applegoogle-hiring-lawsuit-settled\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple\/Google Hiring Lawsuit, Settled"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Levine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Four major tech companies including Apple and Google have agreed to pay a total of $324 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to hold down salaries in Silicon Valley, sources familiar with the deal said, just weeks before a high profile trial had been scheduled to begin<\/p>\n

Tech workers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Inc and Adobe Systems Inc in 2011, alleging they conspired to refrain from soliciting one another’s employees in order to avert a salary war. They planned to ask for $3 billion in damages at trial, according to court filings. That could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Joe Mullin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There were more than 60,000 workers in the class. Class members claimed that the “no cold calls” agreement resulted in $3 billion of lost wages, a far cry from the settlement agreement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The companies, which are some of the world’s richest, must think that is a bargain. At a moment when Silicon Valley is losing some of its luster even on its home territory, the antitrust case depicted the upper levels of the valley’s executive suites as a cozy old boys’ network. Private deals are made, and then the executives send emails saying they wanted everything to remain secret.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Originally there were seven defendants. Settlements with Lucasfilm and Pixar (both now owned by Disney) and Intuit were reached last year. Those companies agreed to pay a total of $20 million — small change in the valley.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like clear victory for the defendants. They avoid more embarrassing e-mails and testimony<\/a> and end up paying just a few thousand dollars per employee, surely less than they saved through this scheme, which also suppressed the wages for plenty of other employees outside the class.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Levine: Four major tech companies including Apple and Google have agreed to pay a total of $324 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to hold down salaries in Silicon Valley, sources familiar with the deal said, just weeks before a high profile trial had been scheduled to begin Tech workers filed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-06-18T11:07:26Z","apple_news_api_id":"3f4339f1-afef-4725-bd7f-98e2781271b5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-06-18T11:07:26Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AP0M58a_vRyW9f5jieBJxtQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[447,2085,38,101,51,937,261,41,209],"class_list":["post-8757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-adobe","tag-antitrust","tag-apple","tag-business","tag-google","tag-hiring","tag-intel","tag-lawsuit","tag-legal"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9107,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8757\/revisions\/9107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}