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Apple, Google to pay $324 million to settle conspiracy lawsuit
- abalone 13y agoNow the question is, how much do people receive after the lawyers take their cut and it's divided up among 64K employees?
- tigerente 13y agoTypically lawyers get on the order of 30%, so about $3400 per employee.
- raldi 13y agoPlus more from other companies?
- dustcoin 13y agoThe article text says "Four major tech companies including Apple and Google have agreed to pay a total of $324 million". Google and Apple are just the ones that get the bad press in headlines.
- neurobro 13y agoOr good press, from an investor's perspective.
- abalone 13y agoNo, that's the total amount from all companies.
- georgemcbay 13y agoAnd then that $3400 gets taxed as normal income so they are probably walking away with something close to $2k each.
- beedogs 13y agoSettlement seems low. Looks like every company involved ended up saving quite a bit of money, after all is said and done, with this little salary racket they had going.
- whoismua 13y agoDear Sergey, Larry, Tim Cook & Co, don't do this again or you'll pay tens of millions after saving hundreds of millions in salaries and benefit.
- sneak 13y agoIt's like you missed the memo that notified everyone that huge corporations that directly or indirectly fund all of the government decision-makers have carte blanche in America!
- Ygg2 13y agoI'm pretty sure Google/Apple will find itself in a ditch it can't escape from (e.g. Microsoft ten years ago and now). Things like this makes new engineers think twice before working for them, additionally their size has already shown as a detriment to them.
- 001sky 13y ago"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." $0.03-0.10/dollar seems pretty cheap. were the odds really that low in court?
- sitkack 13y agoNo, but the lawyers for the class action suit probably wanted an easy windfall vs years of work so they pressured to end this early.
- georgemcbay 13y agoYeah, pretty terrible outcome. Lawyers get a huge chunk of money for relatively little effort, the actual plaintiffs get like a couple of thousand each, and the companies pay out an amount that is likely far less than the amount they saved by the illegal collusion and is also not sufficiently punitive to impact their future decisions to do similar things.
- diestl 13y agoThis will leave a bad taste in the mouth around these companies. Apple really sound like a disgusting corporation when you look behind their well orchestrated PR image.
- rplnt 13y agoSo does Google.
- simonh 13y agoJust out of curiosity, why did you choose to call out Apple particularly?
- nutjob2 13y agoThey got off lightly. What they really didn't want is for the truth about their repugnant behavior to come out. They broke the law so obviously, and have already essentially admitted it to the Justice Dept. I don't know why the lawyers didn't push for more.
- x3c 13y ago324M for 64000 employees in the class action lawsuit. That appears to be 5k per employee before legal fee which could be as high as 30% of the settlement. Hardly 2-3k for each employee, I think. Very cheap for the companies. But at least a good precedent to discourage such practices in the future.
- MichaelApproved 13y ago> Very cheap for the companies. But at least a good precedent to discourage such practices in the future. These two sentences don't mix well with each other. Either it's cheap for companies and worth the expense or it's a good precedent that discourages these practices in the future. Cheap doesn't discourage.
- zwegner 13y ago> Very cheap for the companies. But at least a good precedent to discourage such practices in the future. does not compute
- tsotha 13y agoNo, it's probably not enough to discourage such practices. They almost certainly pocketed more than that as a result of their collusion - from a straight green-eyeshades perspective they ought to get together over a beer this weekend and hammer out a similar agreement.
- malandrew 13y agoWhy in the world would those 64k employees take this offer? It was clear that they were going to pay for this and that a jury would be sympathetic. Was there really any chance that the amount gained could have be lower for the plaintiffs had this case gone to a jury trial? If not, then why didn't they go to trial?
- abalone 13y agoIt actually addresses this. The report explains that there's a chance the whole thing would have been invalidated by an appellate judge. Still, personally as a class member I would've pressed for more, and I bet it's because the firm has different incentives. They probably stand to get something on the order of $100M of that settlement. They're thinking, $100M in the hand is worth $1B in the bush. Especially since going to trial explodes their costs. But at the ~$3K level most class members stand to gain (on average), I bet most would bet that for a chance at $30K. I would. Sucks that the class members don't have a say.
- brudgers 13y agoThat's the reason for the lawyers to settle, A $100 million in fees will feed a family of four. There's no reason to be greedy about it.
- marvin 13y agoI can't believe there's a 90% chance that the class action would be rejected. The companies got off ridiculously cheap. Yet another example of illegal behavior remaining very profitable even after legal action.
- danielweber 13y agoSucks that the class members don't have a say. Class members can opt out of the settlement, and if enough do it (IANAL but one would probably know the magic number) the settlement doesn't hold. There is heavy social pressure not to opt out, though. It would be very public. And actively participating in a lawsuit against an employer puts a black mark on your resume for any future employers. (Which as I pointed out elsewhere can be unfair: sometimes employees sue for bullshit reasons, and sometimes employees sue for incredibly legitimate reasons.)
- brudgers 13y agoIn response to the lawsuit Apple and Google have joined forces in an effort to reduce payments to tech workers. How did I not see that coming?
- karterk 13y agoThe settlement will give 3-5K per employee. Hardly anything. I wonder why they settled, instead of going ahead with the trial. I'm totally unsympathetic with these companies, and now they are just getting away literally free.
- yeukhon 13y agoYou can go on for years. The paper bill you own doesn't hold up its value. You can keep $1 in your pocket but five years from now it hardly actually worth $1. Furthermore, how much is fair? 300K per person? Some of them could have gotten a 50K bump by switching to a new employer. If anything, large sum large number of plaintiffs is usually one of the longest trials you will ever experience if neither side let it go. You can withdraw from the case and start your own lawsuit for more, I guess that can work in legal.
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- KaoruAoiShiho 13y agoThis is way too little. Disgusting.
- danra 13y agoI think the repercussions of this are wildly underestimated by Apple's and Google's management, and they are not doing nearly enough to prevent upcoming mass resignations of their engineers. I'm just extrapolating from my own emotions on the issue. I'd previously thought very positively about going to work for Apple. Not so anymore. To me, the fact that Tim Cook's voice isn't clearly heard, completely rejecting this sort of practice, issuing a public apology on behalf of Apple, and ensuring to compensate employees by more than a few thousand dollars each - Is just too big of a de-motivator. We need the CEOs to clearly voice their accountability, and their plans to prevent this from happening again, the sooner the better.
- apsec112 13y ago"Upcoming mass resignations"? This story has been in the news for nearly four years now. Anyone who sees it as a compelling reason to not work for Google or Apple is long gone.
- zaroth 13y agoMaybe the only bright side I see to this is, a red line has been drawn, a multi-million settlement is drawn out, and everyone knows if there is a next time the penalty would be even worse.
- talmand 13y agoI would think the opposite. If this settlement goes through I would say that the cost of doing this type of business has been decided.
- YPCrumble 13y agoThe moral of this story is that conspiracy is very profitable. Save ~$3bn in costs for a $300MM settlement. Sad.
- michaelochurch 13y agoThere's something Apple and Google and their ilk are much more afraid of than this lawsuit and, based on these shenanigans, it may be time. I found out last March why my manager at Google was adverse to me. I knew someone was pulling strings on him and I had thought that he was taking orders related to my criticism of the G+ direction (in fact, the G+ executives were, as far as I know, innocent) but it was actually because an executive (who's since been disciplined) flagged me as a union risk. I said something to the effect of "decisions would be better if made on the floor" and that was taken to mean far more than I actually meant. (I was talking about G+ Games, not unionizing the Valley. Small difference.) However, that ordeal and the career problems I've faced since then have convinced me that we need to unionize software development and the Valley ecosystem. The Valley is fucking terrified of unions. So terrified that if you even seem like you might be leaning that way, executive-level people in major companies will go out of their way to fuck up your career. A lot of the back-channel reference checking that goes on in the Valley is to avoid taking on a potential unionist. No one cares if you were a mediocre performer 3 jobs ago. That stuff is there to black-list potential unionizers. Now, do I think we want or need a factory-style union where promotions and pay are based on seniority? Hell no. That's a terrible idea. Engineers who work their asses off to become the best they can be, and to advance their respective fields, should be rewarded. I think that the top engineers would make more with a properly-designed union structure than they do now (since, currently, they top out at 1.5 times the pay of mediocre ones). I think our model needs to be more like the Hollywood unions (writers' and actors' guilds). Those do not curtail the financial upside for their members (there are still actors making millions per year) nor do they produce mediocrity. (Say what you want about Hollywood's product, but it's immensely commercially successful and the envy of the pop-culture world.) Specific union protections we need include: * readily available legal support when faced with non-paying clients or bad-faith employers. * recourse against clients and employers who use reputation threats to justify nonpayment or bad behavior (i.e. "if you don't accept our unfunded scope creep, we'll call other clients.") * (for employees) representation when in trouble with management. The right to have a representative *in the room* (mostly, because if you negotiate on your own behalf, you're at risk of getting emotional and saying something stupid) when dealing with management or HR. * defense against negative references and back-channel reference checks in general. * transparency in compensation. * protection against "no-poach" lists and blacklists. A union tip line can help with that. * protection against sharing of individual HR data (salaries, performance reviews) among companies, often used to keep pay down. * negotiation of terms that are embarrassing for an individual to formally address, such as severance, health accommodations and workplace privacy. These are all things that we can have, and that we deserve, that bring none of the negative side effects associated with unions.
- Pxtl 13y agoSo what is that, like $2k per employee per year of the conspiracy? Sounds like they've learned their lesson, and the lesson is "go ahead and do it again, nobody will stop you."
- drawkbox 13y agoYes this is more like a fee or small tax on the bad behavior. "Bob make sure to budget in 300m for the anti-poaching agreements and get those out to the teams and companies. Run it by the senators + lobbyists so we can get that paid and proceed. We don't want anyone that helped us helping themselves or anyone else in the future." -- said the feudal kings stopping engineers and innovation.
- walid 13y agoThe CEOs should have gone to jail for this. They literally conspired against honest workers.
- sigzero 13y agoWell, at least one of the CEOs is dead.
- igonvalue 13y agoI'm very curious about this, and surprised that none of the media articles mention it: Does anybody know where these numbers (both the $324M settlement and the $9B asking price) come from in the first place? Presumably, the plaintiff has hired some experts who've come up with a model that estimates the wages stolen? $324M ÷ 64,000 employees ÷ 3 comes out to $1,687.50 per employee, which seems very low. (The factor of 3 is to account for the treble damages alluded to in the Reuters article.)
- Zelphyr 13y agoI'm really getting tired of the slaps on the wrist these giant corporations are getting for their bad behavior. A few years ago Verizon was fined something like $23 million for bilking their customers out of money. That is literally pocket change for a company that size. It didn't punish them one bit. This is just continuing proof that there is no difference between corporations and the government. One writes the laws and the other passes them. Meanwhile We The People are getting fucked with our pants on.
- dman 13y agoYou do realize that you could start a corporation if you wanted to?
- ajsharp 13y agoYou clearly missed the point here.
- Zelphyr 13y agoOk, lets say I do start a corporation. And I do all the right things and in 5-10 years its doing several hundred billion dollars in revenue. Not unheard of - Apple, Google, Facebook. And lets further say that with all that cash I decide I need to get my own representation in government because its just not efficient to donate the max to my representatives in Congress. So I hire a lobbying firm and/or set up a PAC or two to pressure other representatives who otherwise wouldn't give me the time of day because I'm not a constituent. Now I'm basically (and, in fact, outright) saying to them, "I gave you $x,xxx,xxx.xx in contributions[1] so I want you to pass these laws. I've written them for you so you don't really even need to spend time reading them. Aren't I a nice guy?" And so the representatives pass the laws because I gave them a lot of money and all they really want is the power anyway. Then, because I'm so big, I inevitably do something stupid (at best) or criminal. So I call up the aforementioned paid-for representatives and tell them to get me out of the hot water. They put some pressure on the right people and, Bob's your uncle, I'm paying the equivalent to three or four hours revenue in "fines". THIS. IS. WRONG! If that's not clear enough lets look at it from my standpoint as a citizen (or, you know; and ACTUAL person): I make an average of $45,000 a year and can only contribute $2600 per candidate[2]. In reality I'm only able to contribute a fraction of that and probably don't even do that much. But lets say I do something stupid and/or criminal. What happens to me then? I go to jail AND I pay an ACTUAL fine that is a significantly higher percentage of the income I just lost by going to jail. The people you vote for in this next election need your vote. But they won't be representing you. Because you don't have enough money. Google does though. And so does Apple. And so does Hollywood, Big-Pharma, Oil & Gas... The list goes on of organizations who are more important to your government than you. 1: Bribes 2: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contriblimits.shtml
- anjc 13y agoSo does this mean that the problems will be addressed? Or is settling a way of avoiding this?