U.S. judge approves $415M settlement in tech worker lawsuit

Post by Beltiras » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 10:58 AM UTC

3princip wrote: post #16

Beltiras wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% is a rather "normal" attorney fee award. You can argue they shouldn't get that much but remember that they have to eat the cost of prosecuting the case for a long time before seeing a dime. EDIT: I don't get the harsh downvoting. I'm unfamiliar with the particulars of the case but remember that not all class-actions end favourably for the lawyers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Civil_Action

How much of a financial hit do they really take? Apart from their salaries and associated office costs (covered by past cases presumably) what other costs do they have? Their only excuse is that most businesses do the same thing. Payment processors, freelance agencies, telecoms providers etc, all taking extortionate cuts in relation to the costs incurred providing a service, which comes from our paychecks.

Post by rayiner » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 11:09 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #22

This cartel had 4 members. With all the Silicon Valley tech companies, it's a little hard to see how this would be successful at holding down compensation. In any case, cartels have a historical reputation of being unworkable without laws being passed to force conformance. The problem for the cartel members is they have large incentives to cheat on the agreement. Probably the most famous cartel is OPEC. "Jeff Colgan…

Post by LunaSea » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 11:15 AM UTC

dylanjermiah wrote: post #19

x5n1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs was a scumbag through and through... just one more check mark on stupid shit rich business people and their respective corporations can get away with in America most of the time. Even now it's a small sum for these companies, a few thousand dollars a person, much less than the actual pay lost due to corruption. A few billion each would've actually sent a message and actually set the victims whole. Funny how the…

Jobs was far from perfect. However, his contributions _far_ outweigh all his transgressions. The iPhone has (and will) ushered in an era of unimaginable prosperity for, in the coming years, literally the entire planet. Whether or not his work could have been achieved without his faults is an open question. One which the counter factual isn't possible. The key thing to remember is that there are no solutions, only tra…

Post by spacecowboy_lon » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 11:23 AM UTC

littletimmy wrote: post #18

smtddr wrote: post #14

I commented on this a year ago or so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154909 My opinion on this is unchanged and I'm still disturbed by the greed behind this lawsuit.

I am more disturbed at the greed behind the original injustice. The tech companies should be punished, the greed of the plaintiffs is completely irrelevant.

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Sep 04, 2015, 11:33 AM UTC

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #28

WalterBright wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at some of the articles on this particular cartel. I didn't see evidence presented that employees of the cartel were compensated less than employees at other tech companies. While there is no doubt there was an illegal cartel, I'm skeptical that it was an effective cartel.

It acted to suppress wages across the industry by reducing wage rises on moves. Effectively its negativly skewing the salery distribution for every one - this is basic Stats 101.