Corporations 1, Employees 0 (So Far)

Remember the conspiracy to hold down employee wages that was settle a couple of years back? Here's Part II.

Apple, Google, Pixar, Adobe win court order to block class action lawsuit

Apple Inc. and six other companies won a court order to block potentially thousands of employees, from engineers to sous chefs, from proceeding in a group lawsuit that their incomes were held down by the companies' agreements not to recruit one another's workers.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., ruled Friday that information-sharing by plaintiffs lawyers and the companies may permit the case to go forward and the employees may refile their claims with the newer information.

The case can't proceed now as a class action, partly because "plaintiffs examples, though compelling, may not be sufficient to show that all or nearly all class members were affected by the anti-solicitation agreements without additional documentary support or empirical analysis," Koh wrote. ...

The companies argued that the employees' lawyers failed to show that everyone in the proposed class was hurt by any such agreements, as is required for the group to be certified as a class. Plaintiffs' lawyers claim the anti-competitive behavior artificially suppressed incomes of more than 160,000 employees across a range of job categories. ...

Happily, Judge Koh didn't shut the door on the plaintiffs renewing their motions.

Unhappily, the plaintiffs aren't there yet.