It's not entirely surprising that Jobs wanted to strip his employees of their right to seek market wages; for all his talk of disruptive nonconformity, he has a notoriously nasty and authoritarian management style. And he reportedly had a similar "no poaching" deal in place with Google. What is eye-opening about Bloomberg's report is the frank manner in which then-Palm CEO Ed Colligan pushed back:

"Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal," Colligan said to Jobs, 54, according to the communications.

Palm had just hired iPod executive Jon Rubinstein away from Apple and surely knew it would soon embark on an epic Apple hiring spree; Rubinstein's blunt response was no doubt intended to be part of a library of evidence of Apple's behavior, should one ever be needed. But Jobs was not cowed. According to Bloomberg, he stated that "Apple had patents and more money than Palm if the companies ended up in a legal fight."

Who leaked these "communications" — emails, presumably — to Bloomberg? The obvious bet is Palm, which has been engaged in a back-and-forth war with Apple to allow its Palm Pre mobile device, which competes with Apple's iPhone, to sync with Apple's iTunes software. Apple's attempts to stop such syncing have been the object of deserved ridicule online, and Jobs' threatening message to Palm might have been leaked to drum up further outrage and put more pressure on Apple to open its platform .

There's also a chance someone involved with the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into Silicon Valley hiring is the source of the leak. That probe involves not only Apple but Google and Yahoo, as well, according to a Washington Post report.

Whatever the source of the information, the bottom line for Apple is that it faces a mounting perception that it is a bully, between this, the Palm Pre issue and the two federal investigations into ties between Google and Apple, to say nothing of its exclusionary policies concerning the iPhone app store. That's not going to dent, say, iPhone sales anytime soon. But it's going to hurt Apple's ability to pose as the Valley's corporate iconoclast, which will have a real, if intangible, effect on the company long-term.

[via Business Insider]

That's probably why ABC News last year agreed to pay wages for BlackBerry time during big breaking news events. But fights involving smartphones and wages are growing, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the devices spread. At least, they are among companies that can afford highfalutin' text-based mobile communication, during a recession. Not all can!

[via Business Insider]

(Pic: Eric Havir)

The Justice Department is investigating whether large tech companies illegally conspired over employee poaching. It's an open secret in the Valley that tech companies have agreements not to actively recruit one another's workers; Kleiner Perkins partner Randy Komisar called these "gentlemen's understanding[s]" in the New York Times today. It appears the Justice Department may have finally decided to make an issue of the practice on antitrust grounds.

If that's the case, some of the largest tech companies are at risk. The Times quoted a former Google recruiter saying the company distributes a list of companies whose workers cannot be approached. Then there's the email:

A December 2007 e-mail message written by a Google recruiter and obtained by The New York Times suggests that the company might have had an agreement with Apple on recruiting.

Laura Sheppard, a contract recruiter at Google, sent the e-mail message to a job candidate asking him to put her in touch with another potential candidate. "It is a bit touchy since he works for Apple," Ms. Sheppard wrote, adding that Google had "a nonsolicit agreement with them."

Google declined to comment on its hiring practices or on the e-mail message, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

There you have it: When it comes to immigration controls or the taxation of stock options, tech honchos are all about the free market. But when it comes to the sort of competition that most benefits your average Silicon Valley worker — competitive hiring — suddenly they turn into feudal lords. Is that really so "gentleman"ly?

[Times]

The Washington Post's anonymous sources said the Feds are investigating whether the firms illegally negotiated "the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees," in violation of antitrust law.

Silicon Valley companies have been known to compete fiercely for top talent, including immigrant engineers. When Google hired computer scientist and former Carnegie Mellon professor Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was famously said to have thrown a chair across the room in anger.

The upshot of competition for immigrant workers is higher wages. Free marketeers who advocate for more H1-B worker visas, like the American Enterprise Institute, should know that better than anyone.

Logically, then, if tech companies suppressed competition for H1-B visa holders, they were retarding immigrant income growth. By treating workers like so much property, they would have inhibited the very prosperity they claim to support.

Tech companies wouldn't talk to the Post about the investigation. But they should reverse that chance as soon as they can: The Valley's image as a center of immigrant wealth and opportunity is among its strongest political assets.

(Pic via)

• Program Manager: $86,000
• Tester: $95,000
• Developer: $110,000
• Developer: $117,000
• Technical Writer: $129,000

Then again, maybe they know better than to join Team Redmond's corporate culture, which imposes a glass ceiling on anyone who doesn't have an MBA. And of course it doesn't include the underpaid service workers cleaning Valley bathrooms and undocumented employees in Valley kitchens.

(Photo by Marc Smith)

It's part of the union's strategy to convince the company to pressure subcontractor Aramark into negotiating a better deal with striking service workers. And after today's festivities, a group of Diggnation groupies will be delivered by CalTrain after a boozy ride from San Francisco for a live taping of the show at 6:30 p.m. after the day-long conference. Both the activists and the fanboys will surely add color to the official company line CEO Jen-Hsun Huang pitched at the keynote. (Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan)

The Qwest deal follows on a larger contract signed on behalf of Verizon employees by the CWA, also under threat of strike. "That day, with the strike deadline looming, the company started bargaining a lot more seriously," CWA spokesman Jeff Miller said of the earlier negotiations in a phone call last week. But even by adding call-center employees, the CWA has their work cut out for them expanding its rolls. "The new technologies are not as labor-intensive as past years. An awful lot of jobs have disappeared in the traditional copper wireline business," Miller added. What about fiber-optic linemen, like those working on Verizon's Fios efforts? Those employees were largely under contract already, according to Miller. And once the fiber's in the ground, those jobs will get buried, too. (Photo by AP/David Zalubowski)

In the video above from last year, attorneys from law firm Cohen & Grigsby detailed how the firm suggests a minimum of job opening ads are placed in markets where it's unlikely a qualified applicant will apply, so few are received. The firm also provides the company with a checklist which the employer can use to quickly process — and reject — any applications it may receive so that the company can permanently certify the foreign national. If a citizen passes that test, there are further tricks to making sure something arises from the interview process that disqualifies them. Disqualifying Americans also works in the favor of companies overall, since it allows them numbers to cite when complaining about the need to raise immigration quotas and expedite the process.

Fragomen is citing the First Amendment and due process in arguing that it should be allowed to offer counsel to employers. Meanwhile, up to 3,000 applications are on hold pending the investigation.

• If you're an employee who's paid hourly and has filled out a W-2 form, you are probably non-exempt. In which case, you are entitled to time-and-a-half after eight hours in a day or the first eight hours on the seventh continuous day and beyond, and double-time after twelve hours in a day or eight hours on the seventh continuous day.
• For salaried workers, there are three classes of exemption. If you are an "executive," you are exempt from overtime. Executives are involved in the management of the company, have at least two subordinates reporting to them directly, have the power to hire and fire employees or recommend such actions and are allowed to make independent decisions that impact the business.
• The "administrator" exemption only applies in cases where an employee is administering the business affairs of a company, directly assists a proprietor or executive, or works independently and exercises discretion on non-manual tasks that involve special skill or technical expertise. However, if you're in the process of producing goods and services that the company sells, you're probably not exempt. This class of exemption is often abused.
• The "professional" exemption is one that's often abused at technology companies, because accredited engineers or others doing "learned or artistic" creative or intellectual work is exempted — but only if they make over twice the state's full-time minimum wage in salary, which is over $33,000 a year. And this is meant to apply to individuals, not entire classes of employees at a company (hence the quantity of class-action suits when companies apply the exemption too broadly).

Nice timing. Fragomen keeps its client list close to the vest, but managing partner Austin Fragomen also chairs the American Council on International Personnel, where he leads a Who's-Who-of-High-Tech Board that includes execs from Intel, HP, IBM, Sun and Oracle.

These janitors are employed by contractors, make from $8 to $11 an hour with no health benefits, let alone stock options. They often live in cramped conditions thanks to the cost of local real estate. All so you don't have to get your hands dirty cleaning up after the catered lunch in the conference room. (Photo from a Valleywag tipster)