RIM Accuses Motorola of Blocking Job Offers 353
theodp writes "Taking a page from the insanely-jealous-husband-playbook, Motorola management has adopted an if-I-can't-have-you-nobody-can stance on its fired employees, reportedly blocking RIM from offering jobs to laid-off workers. In a complaint filed in state court, Motorola is charged with improperly trying to expand a previous agreement 'to prevent the RIM entities from hiring any Motorola employees, including the thousands of employees Motorola has already fired or will fire.' Through its Compete America membership, Motorola has repeatedly warned Congress that failing to accommodate the lobbying group members' 'principled' demand for timely access to talent would not be in the United States' economic interest and would make the US second-rate in education and basic research."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pathetic. (Score:5, Informative)
For what? A dispute with Blackberry? Screw you Motorola, you've just lost my business forever.
Motorola is having a lot of troubled times lately. They might be laying off people, but I think they are probably playing the 'end of the year' game I see so many large companies do. Basically what they're trying to do is lay a bunch of people off to make the end of the year budget, but after the first of the year they'll hire a signicant percentage of those laid off back when new budgets kick in. I've seen this pattern a thousand times, especially in the auto industry. Of course, the people they'll hire back will be taking a pay cut.
That's why they want to keep RIM from hiring them off.
Kinda dirty.
Motorola is an Illinois Tech Company (Score:2, Informative)
I started my tech career in Illinois, and I'm glad I did. It was incredibly competitive in Chicago in the early and mid 90s, and I learned more there in six years than I could have ever learned anywhere else in twice the time.
But I'd rather sling coffee out of a truck in Union Square than ever move back to Chicago and work in the tech industry there. It's unnecessarily brutal.
Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)
5 Years?
That's ridiculous.
Non-competes are unethical in the first place, and 5 years is just stupid. Frankly I'd just ignore it.
As long as you aren't actually taking designs, code or other property with you, they have no call to stop you and (AFAICT) no legal basis to do so either.
Re:Agreement? (Score:3, Informative)
And not one 'non-solicit' agreement I've ever seen uses that sort of definition and if a corporate lawyer of a company as large Motorola did, they'd deserve to join the laid off crew.
Almost every one of those type of agreements have some sort of clause in them counting people who had been employeed at all in the past X years (actively employeed or not) as employees.
Re:Campaign Contributions (Score:3, Informative)
I thought campaign contributions were considered more valuable than individual votes.
And that's exactly why political campaign contributions coming from anyone other than individual registered voters needs to be outlawed.
This is exactly what the Liberal party did in Canada a few years ago when they were in power: capped the amount that an individual could donate to a political party to just over $1000/year, and outright banned contributions by organizations (e.g. companies, unions, special interest groups, etc).
In return, parties could draw on taxpayer subsidies; the total pool is about $30 million a year, and each party's share is roughly proportional to the popular vote they received in the previous election.
I had only a vague understanding of all this until earlier just a few weeks ago, when the neo-conservatives holding a minority government introduced a motion to eliminate the subsidy under the guise of saving taxpayers the $30 million/year. Long story short, this caused such an uproar that the prime minister had Parliament suspended until late January, rather than face an immediate non-confidence vote that would have toppled his minority government.
It was a brilliant strategy at the time--why should political parties be taxpayer funded, especially in tough economic times? Parties should raise funds privately, just like the Conservatives do! And since the Conservatives got the most votes last time, we stand to lose the most, see what we're sacrificing for you, the taxpayer? Look at the other parties, they can't survive without government handouts!
It was, however, a bullshit gambit to bankrupt the other parties right after a bitter election campaign. And of course the Conservatives stood to gain way more than they'd lose, generally being more aligned with big business interests.
$30 million is a lot to 99% of voters, but a drop in the bucket in a multi-billion budget (and only 10% what the Conservatives wasted by calling an early election). It would be like axing NASA because they spend $15 billion a year, while ignoring that they're a mere 0.6% of the US budget.
If $30 million (less than $2 per Canadian) each year is the price for limiting corporate corruption in politics, I am entirely for keeping it.