Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe face salary fixing lawsuit
Source: CIO
Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe are accused of agreeing not to poach each others staff, therefore holding back career development and suppressing compensation. A federal court in California has ordered seven technology companies in the state including Apple, Intel, Adobe and Google to face a private antitrust suit from five former employees, who alleged that the companies conspired to eliminate competition between them for skilled labor to suppress compensation and mobility of employees
District Judge Lucy H. Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division ruled on Wednesday that the plaintiffs' antitrust claims cannot be dismissed on the basis of implausibility, and that they have adequately pleaded antitrust injury as a result of six agreements among the companies.
... The former employees, all software engineers, had charged that from 2005 to 2007 the defendants had entered into nearly identical "do not cold call" bilateral agreements whereby each placed the employees of the other in a "do not cold call" list with instructions to recruiters not to "cold call" these employees.
... "The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven Defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence," Judge Koh wrote in her 29-page order.
Read more: http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3352607/apple-google-face-salary-fixing-lawsuit/