I'm shocked. Shocked.
Several of the U.S.'s largest technology companies are in advanced talks with the Justice Department to avoid a court battle over whether they colluded to hold down wages by agreeing not to poach each other's employees.
The companies, which include Google Inc., Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and Walt Disney Co. unit Pixar Animation, are in the final stages of negotiations with the government ...
As I read the article, the long and short of it seems to be that various companies have agreements with other companies that they won't hire key personnel away from direct or indirect competitors.
There's no way this wouldn't have the effect of keeping the salaries of key personnel lower than they otherwise would be. If you don't have the ability to leverage your rate of pay by offering your services to another company across town, you're kind of stuck.
This is the same behavior that leads companies to prohibit employees (or "discourage" employees) from sharing wage information. If they can move the fulcrum so that workers have less ability to get more money, they will, laws and regulations be damned.
It's all about the greenbacks, friends and neighbors. It's what leads corporate execs to backdate options on company stock, nudges city managers to obscure their salaries, encourages bankers to take huge, leveraged risks safe in the knowledge the government will cover their backs.
Because there can never be enough.
Let me add that VFX Soldier and Professor Mark Farquhar brought the above to our attention.
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I suppose that anyone employed by the above companies who was turned down by another of those companies will now have grounds for a lawsuit or leverage for a settlement or raise.
Pixar's CFO was recently poached by Twitter.
No, not Pixar...(sob). They're so lovely and fluffy. Oh yeah, plus they pay really badly despite their films being huge. They're one of those places it is a privilege to work, like Disney before DW pushed up the salaries.
imagemovers/disney hr told us, straight to our faces in a company meeting, that they had a 'no poaching' agreement with the local studios (pixar, pdi, ilm) and some far off like weta and maybe sony.
I thought it was more than fishy then and one of us mailed the union. Don't know if anything came of that. It wasn't mentioned again.
Well, if Pixar was involved in this sleaziness, then I hope it gets fined and sued but good. That's DISGUSTING. It's made tons of money and yet underpays its employees? Well, it's just lost THIS fan.
This is a close cousin of "price fixing."
Back in the early 80's it was known about a meeting that took place involving the main players in the Canadian animation market. The meeting involved keeping wages for artists at the same lowered levels so that there would be no price wars between companies for talent. The wages would be fixed and very much limit the artists from making any more than the set prices.
The prices remain today, set with small cost of living increases. Even with the company owners receiving kick backs for hiring Canadians, the wage scale is low and will remain low.
That's why Pixar is in Vancouver.
Looking at this positively, at least by setting wage scales they are still planning on keeping some people hired. Not getting rich, but hired.
Shortly after Catmull and Lasseter took over Disney Feature, Ed gave a talk to all the Feature employees in a "town hall" meeting. While mentioning how he was changing ways in which the studio operated, he explicitly said that he had made a "non-poaching" agreement with other studios. Additionally, a friend who works in Disney Feature HR confirmed that the deal was in place. A recruiter was never to cold-call an artist at another studio to entice them to Disney (and vice-versa for other studios). They had to wait for an artist to contact them.
They explicitly said this was done to avoid the bidding wars and escalating wages of the 90's--and sure enough, animation wages have been stagnant for years. I hope all studios who participated in this illegal collusion get nailed with massive fines. There are hundreds of witnesses at Disney Feature Animation who all heard what Ed said.
Don't forget Pixar was caught backdating stock options...just as Disney was buying them. Disney got the matter cleared up fast with the government, and it's not been in the news since.
Hope someone who works for Pixar would be brave enough to sue them for this. Like what happened to EA games. Pixar's employees deserve better than what they are paying them for. Privilege, so what? That's a load of shit for egotistic people to use as an excuse to push eager talents around. I find a lot of the talents in those studios would have been better off if they came together to start up their own studio.
I can't wait for another studio to start beating Pixar down the drain in terms of quality films PLUS good pay... Also giving the Pixar employees the choice to leave them for better work treatment if they wanted to. Besides, Oakland is a horribly cheap location for such a 'prestigious' company.
Fifteen years ago DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Feature Animation had an explicit non-compete agreement, to the point of literally lending employees back and forth, and sharing wage information so that salaries wouldn't be driven up. The feeling among execs at the two studios was that they were both in a battle with Disney, and they shouldn't hurt each other.
It shouldn't be any surprise that over the last 10 years or so animator's wages have been completely stagnant. Voice talent, on the other hand, as gone from consistently making scale minimum (which was still good pay for a few days work) to getting obscene live-action style deals. And from looking at the houses they're buying, executive bonuses haven't been trimmed much.
People see that the cost of animated features have basically doubled and tripled in just a decade, while the people making the films are often making exactly what they made years ago. And yet the entertainment press continues to buy into the fiction that it's the artists and TD's salaries that drive these costs up.
There will be a slap on the wrist and all will be forgotten in 2 months. So is life of the big companies.
Will the Obama Administration's Justice Department go for a settlement and a slap on the wrist? Or will they go after Big Corporate and take them to court on charges of collusion? Stay tuned.
The game is rigged. Always has been. A wise old live-action producer told me that years ago and I've never forgotten it.
While we spend our days drawing princesses and bunny rabbits, the fat cats are in their offices working on schemes to get richer. And - they will.
I don't know of a better reason to protest. If animators don't act now, this situation will not improve, but it will only deteriorate.
How bad does it have to get before people react? How much lower will the salaries get before people react? How many roommates does one have to live with to make the rent? How can we hope for retirement?
rufus
Well, if theres a non-poaching agreement, you could have fooled me. Dreamworks is ALWAYS cold-calling (emailing) other studios employees offering higher salaries and better benefits.
And you know what, it benefits the employees. Almost all the raises I hear about are from situations like this.
Pixar has always paid low and shame on them for it. And by low, I mean 30% less. Thats a LOT
I've posted wage information on many vfx, games, and animation studios. Generally speaking Pixar is one of the lowest paying companies in the industry:
http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/wages-in-the-vfx-animation-and-games-industry/
Yeah. Pixar hires animators for 61k a year. 61k.
Pathetic. You cant live in the bay area for that, much less support a family.
Thanks VFX soldier! That is eye opening indeed!
WTF
I must have missed the posting that stated jack booted PIXAR recruiters coming into animator's houses and kid napping them - forcing them to work on their films. Oh wait, that never happened, artists willingly take less to work on PIXAR films...so, I guess when people stop heading to Emeryville, PIXAR will have to pay more until then though its game on...
^ who let the strawman out?
It might be interesting to see what happens when Pixar artists get tired of making sequels....
Monsters Inc 2? Cars2? C'mon......
...jack booted PIXAR recruiters coming into animator's houses....
If they're living in houses, they're already making more than 61k.
I just read the WSJ article.
I'm embarrassed to ask what may be a dumb question in the comment section of such a grown-up newspaper:
The corporations under investigation are negotiating to avoid court. In Canada, this would mean copping a plea, but somehow this is a civil case! How does DOJ have standing in a civil suit? Does that mean the Pixar workers don't?
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