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A U.S. judge has granted a class action status to a lawsuit that alleges that Silicon Valley companies suppress employee compensation by conspiring not to solicit each other’s employees.
California Judge Lucy Koh pointed out that the Class Members’ interests and the nature of the defendants’ alleged “overarching conspiracy” weighed in favor of litigating the case as a class action.
The lawsuit alleges that Silicon Valley companies Adobe Systems Inc., Intel Corp., Apple Inc. and Google Inc. and others violated the Sherman Act and Clayton Act antitrust laws by conspiring to eliminate competition for labor.
According to the five software engineers who filed the lawsuit in 2011, the Silicon Valley companies mentioned in the complaint allegedly conspired between 2005 and 2009 to reduce employee compensation to artificially low levels, depriving workers of employment mobility and hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.
The plaintiffs are using email exchanges between Apple’s late Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Jobs and former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt as evidence in the lawsuit.
Judge Koh also certified the proposed class of technical employees, which includes software and hardware engineers, component designers, application developers, among others. The size of this class could be more than 50,000 people, down from the original complaint when the plaintiffs were seeking for an “All Employee” class which could have included every salaried employee who worked for the defendant companies between 2005 and 2009.
The class action status would give the plaintiffs more leverage with financial settlements rather than taking the mentioned Silicon Valley companies to court individually.
The case is In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 11-02509, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
UPDATE: Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe reached a class action settlement agreement on April 24, 2014.
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3 thoughts onClass Action Lawsuit Against Adobe, Intel, Apple, Google Gets Certification
Is Cisco involved in this class action? I was an employee there for 16 years.
This story is extremely important to the American Public. An example of how American Business has lost all sight of ethics and constraint. It is particularly important to recent college graduates, they would be well advised to NOT consider employment with any of these Corporations – ever !
UPDATE: Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe reached a class action settlement agreement on April 24, 2014. More info: http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/24989-google-apple-intel-adobe-settle-wage-theft-class-action-lawsuit/