14 DAY TRIAL // Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe are waiting for the judge to decide whether to approve or reject the settlement deal they reached in the wage-fixing lawsuit, hoping that in this manner they’ll stop details from leaking about the inner workings of the companies.
This hasn’t really worked apparently, as the Wall Street Journal reports that Google tried to fend off Facebook from poaching its employees.
US District Judge Lucy Koh, the one who’s handling the case, posted documents that feature emails between Google execs who are concerned about Facebook hiring their employees. Since the social network was never included in this special group, it had no obligation to respect its rules, which was a concern.
Google has done its best to have the documents sealed, but it appears that Judge Koh didn’t agree since she made them public, albeit with some redactions. The files reportedly indicate that Google was considering setting up a policy in which it would try to convince employees to stay by offering them a counteroffer within one hour of Facebook making its move.
Furthermore, the company was juggling with the idea of confronting Facebook recruiters who had the nerve to approach Google workers, or even to fight back by having Sergey Brin or Larry Page start recruiting Facebook’s employees.
It looks like this isn’t just a scheme to keep wages low, but also to keep employees trapped within a company, something that is obviously troubling.
The case originally included several other companies – Lucasfilm, Pixar, and Intuit – and it started in 2011. Then, a Lucasfilm software engineer sued the seven companies, saying that they were conspiring to keep wages low after they agreed not to hire each other’s employees.
When word got out about the case, others felt they were being wronged too so a class-action lawsuit was put together. In no time, about 65,000 people who worked for the companies between 2005 and 2010 were involved.
Lucasfilm, Pixar, and Intuit reached a settlement last year for $20 million (€14.7). Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel have agreed to pay $324.5 million (€238.7 million) to the plaintiffs, even though the original request from them was of $3 billion (€2.2 billion).
The deal will translate in a few thousand dollars for each employee covered in the suite, much less than what they claim to have lost through this deal. The sum is so small, in fact, that one plaintiff wrote to the judge asking her not to accept the deal.
It is unclear whether Judge Lucy Koh will approve the offer, but an announcement should be made soon.