Saturday, January 21, 2012

The Usual Stacked Deck

Here's a big surprise:

Lori McAdams of Pixar, which also had a "no-poach" agreement with Lucasfilm, sent an internal email saying that "effective now, we'll follow a gentleman's agreement with Apple that is similar to our Lucasfilm agreement."

Gee. A big company. Colluding with other big companies to hold down wages. Who'd have thought?

Must be a treat for the congloms to have these come out now. I feel so bad for them.

As the Register says:

The emails are part of the Justice Department's evidence in its class action suit that accuses the tech firms of agreeing not to steal each other's staff so that they could artificially lower employees' wages by killing competition.

The only time it wasn't this way was when Disney and DreamWorks CEOs hated each other and the two companies were outbidding each other for talent. This was the middle nineties.

8 comments:

Floyd Norman said...

Sounds like we need more hate.

Anonymous said...

Americans need to understand that the 1% are rich not because they work harder, but because they work together. Collusion, sweetheart deals, and outright monopolies. lawmakers, lobbyists and lawyers work for their friends and their friends pay them back.

Anti-union efforts are intended to prevent the 99% from working together. Each artist acts like he or she is on his own and has to undercut everyone else to be "safe". That's a losers game.

Omar said...

^ this guy knows what's up.

Steve Hulett said...

Americans need to understand that the 1% are rich not because they work harder, but because they work together.

Just look at our recent history: When the financial elites got in trouble (2008), the elites in the government made them whole. (Hank Paulson, good ol' ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs.)

CEOs of big companies make sure they have cooperative boards of directors to shower them with goodies.

And companies cooperate with one another to keep wages down; lobby Washington to A) keep tax breaks and subsidies flowing in their direction and B) Keep personal tax rates low; contribute enough "speech" to insure that the right candidates win state and federal offices.

Is this a great country or what?

Anonymous said...

This is rich, considering Lori madams is a former Lucas hr employee--poached from there by Pixar president Jim Morris--a former head of Lucas. Who was hired by Ed Catmull, former Lucas employee.

I'm betting these moves weren't for lesser salaries.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Steve, this IS a great country. The greatest thing about it is that it has a Constitution that can be amended and myriad ways for laws to be changed.

Both the left and the right cater to the rich; no big revelation there. If REAL change is to be affected, then people have to vote for the BEST candidates regardless of their party affiliation. And look at their backgrounds. They matter. Don't vote for a guy because he talks nice and looks good in a suit, take into account the fact that he, say, voted "Present!" when asked to consider matters of state and hung out with home-grown terrorists. Because, as we've sadly come to know, such things can indicate matters of judgement, and thus such things MATTER.

Benjamin Franklin said...

The language in the constitution is ambiguos enough to let the goverment abuse its powers to control people. Its not the goverment 'for' the people anymore.

USA. Rigging the game since 1776!

Anonymous said...

Yes, and since 8 years of bush and dick shredded the constitution, we're left holding the bag to glue it back together.

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