PandoDaily has been doing great work covering Google's involvement with Apple and other Silicon Valley companies in agreeing not to recruit other companies employees and avoiding driving up wages. But here's an interesting new little tidbit from the lawsuit:
The following companies have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list.
Effective March 6, 2005:
• Genentech, Inc.The belief is that the agreements came from various CEOs that sat on each others' boards. It's my assumption that it was Genentech's IT/computer folks who were on "do not touch" lists. (I mean, I assume that Apple wasn't interested in hiring Genentech molecular biologists or something.)
• Intel Corporation
• Apple Computer
• Paypal, Inc.
• Comcast Corporation
I don't really believe in conspiracies, but it's difficult not to believe when you have CEOs e-mail/calling each other (scroll down to see the really eye-opening call/e-mail exchange between Google CEO Eric Schmidt and EBay CEO Meg Whitman.)
The last time I talked about this, someone suggested that the legacy chemical corporations used to do this -- wonder if it's still going on?
I think they prefer to be more subtle these days - lobby for comprehensive immigration reform with lots of H1Bs. Same net result of keeping wages low, and people have a much more difficult time being against it while avoiding coming across as xenophobic.
ReplyDeleteOur entire work visa should system should be scrapped and replaced with an auction for a fixed number of time-limited (3 month to 3 year) unrestricted work visas. Applicants would bid up the price of visas to the point that they wouldn't be able to undercut American wages, and USCIS would bring in several billion dollars per year that it could use to streamline the system, speed up processing, etc. Obviously, applicants would have to pass a security screening before bidding.
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