So here we have billionaires and millionaires, a group of "free market capitalists" that tout meritocracy, conspiring and colluding to cripple wages for their workers.
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 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. The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar 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 it all here.
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 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. To the naysayers. This isn't hard to understand. It isn't excusable, and it is theft of not only wages, but of career opportunity. Imagine you were a hot shot Apple employee a few years back, Working at the pinnacle, where tech meets art, and Steve Fricking Jobs, is telling (demanding) that no one- NO ONE- dare to poach one of his employees. If this anti poaching agreement didn't exist, that Apple employee could have (potentially) doubled her salary by becoming an executive at Yahoo or Intel. Two companies which would have paid through the roof to get some of that Apple pixie dust. But since they were afraid to incur the wrath of Jobs, the workers lost out, and they had no idea that they were secretly blacklisted.