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."
Sorry Motorola (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you aren't playing with your toys, you have to share with the other children.
If they really want to keep RIM from having their castoff engineers, just keep paying their salaries.
Pathetic. (Score:1, Insightful)
From TFA: "BlackBerry maker Research in Motion sued Motorola over claims the mobile phone maker is improperly blocking it from offering jobs to laid-off Motorola workers"
This is really sad. The US has a very high unemployment rate and people are struggling to find jobs. Some people are barely able to put bread on the table and Motorola wants to keep it that way? For what? A dispute with Blackberry? Screw you Motorola, you've just lost my business forever.
fired vs quit (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe that anyone is even allowed to fire someone and then to prevent them from attempting to get another job anywhere they want.
One thing is when someone quits and there is a non-competition agreement, another thing is when someone is fired. Has anyone ever lost in court to a company that fired them when they started working for a competitor?
Everyone: if you are a 'permanent' employee, don't sign non-compete clauses, and if you do, at least modify them to say that if the company terminates your employment, then this clause does not apply.
Nice of Motorola, by the way, to attempt and stop people that they fired from trying to find employment, especially in this economy. If anything is going to hurt economy of the USA it's going to be millions of unemployed people.
Re:Move to CA (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this could easily pave the way for legislation to make every state like California. In this age of rising unemployment, legislation that removes arbitrary restrictions of this nature on employment only makes timely sense. Sure, it would make some businesses angry, but they don't vote. And truly, anyone who preaches "free market society" and at the same time seeks to "limit the competition" doesn't know what the spirit of the free market is about.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:5, Insightful)
If they really want to keep RIM from having their castoff engineers, just keep paying their salaries.
Can we get a +6 insightful?
I hope Motorola's lawyers get spanked so hard, the stockholders have hand prints on their butts.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:2, Insightful)
Cant say im surprised after reading their letter to congress.
They want to keep Americans unemplyed and sell our jobs overseas.
I truly hope that teh execs at motorla rot in hell with ken lay. (keep people hungry to pad your own bonus, dante didnt even have a layer of hell for that!)
An improvement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the US is far behind being 2nd in education - most notably math - wouldn't being 2nd be an improvement?
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps we should retain our high-value educated workforce by preventing them from leaving the country, to make sure they carry out their patriotic duty! Maybe we could set up some sort of iron... curtain... or such, to make sure they stay.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one who is a paragon of "Capitalism" believes in "Free Market" regardless of the mouthings their PR tasked people make. The aim of any successful capitalist is to leverage yourself into the position of having all the capital and therefore controlling the market. The only time free market is observed as a "good thing" by true capitalists is when forcing their competitors into one gives the capitalist an advantage.
Economic theorists aside, only failed capitalists actually follow the theory of modern capitalism. In a way, it's much like Scientology in that respect. The initiates believe and the 'true believers' don't.
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as people like to bitch about outsourcing here in the USA, why should we allow our talent to migrate to Canada? Doesn't allowing High Tech workers to work for foreign companies support Microsoft's contention that we need to increase H1Bs because the talent isn't here anymore?
That is a separate issue. If I fire you, what right do I have to say where you can and can't work? It is that simple. I believe we (U.S.) have a constitutional amendment addressing such practices.
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as people like to bitch about outsourcing here in the USA, why should we allow our talent to migrate to Canada?
Allow your talent to migrate? Jesus fucking christ, is this the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA or SOVIET RUSSIA?
A FREE COUNTRY does not lock in its citizens and prevent them from leaving. Are you building the new Berlin wall?
Is this the USA? The FREE WORLD? Or did someone cut off your country's balls?
Doesn't allowing High Tech workers to work for foreign companies support Microsoft's contention that we need to increase H1Bs because the talent isn't here anymore?
If you are FIRING the talent, you can't claim that the talent isn't there anymore.
In case you didn't know, RIM has offices all over the world. RIM employs quite a few people in the USA.
Re:Pathetic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless, if you lay someone off and aren't paying their wages, you shouldn't have claim to block them from picking up somewhere else. Regardless of your self serving plans to hire them back at a pay cut a couple of months later.
CorpAmerica (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:out of work and a place to go (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Motorola wants to keep these people unemployed.
I see a massive and expensive class-action suit in the offing. Motorola shareholders should contact the company's general counsel and tell him in no uncertain terms to cut that shit out.
-jcr
I doubt the shareholders give a damn, in fact, it's the shareholder's general lack-of-interest in ethical behavior that has bought corporate America to its current state. All Motorola's management would have to say is, "by doing this we're going to raise the share price." That would be the end of the matter so far as the shareholders are concerned.
You're right though: it would certainly be in the employees best interests to get organized, talk to a good law firm, and apply for class-action status.
Does anyone know exactly how many people we're talking about here? The articles linked were rather skimpy on details (in fact the first two were links to the same text.)
Re:fired vs quit (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, how, about, they pay you for the rest of your life. - you are being facetious but I am not certain why exactly, I suppose there is very thick sarcasm somewhere there. Certainly a company should be able to fire someone they don't need, someone who is not doing his/her job, whatever, and there if someone is fired, they are fired. If there is a contract that forces the company to pay compensation for certain types of dismissal it's all good, whatever.
However this does not have anything to do with the anti-competitive clauses that people routinely sign when they get a position. I am a contractor, haven't worked permanently since the beginning of 2001 and I do sign various NDAs, anti-competition clauses and such. But I always read them first and I modify them where I see it necessary. Most people make the mistake of not doing this and it will bite them.
NDAs and anti-competition clauses are really anti-capitalist in nature, they are protectionist ideas, they go against my system of believes. But enough about that.
Motorola stating that the unemployed people, who were fired by them must not be allowed to be hired by a competitor because this will cause harm to the economy of the USA is not simply mean spirited and false, it is pure evil.
It cannot be argued that an unemployed person, or a person who has good experience to do a job that requires special knowledge will harm any economy by obtaining a job that requires this expertise. However it can be argued economy gets harmed by having people who are under-utilizing their potential or simply are unemployed, collecting employment insurance or welfare or whatever. Economy suffers from this much more than from people working for competitors, because in fact working for competitors, creates more competition, whether it is fair or not, competition does what it is supposed to do.
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately being fired does not automaticly negate a signed contract. However, on the flip side, most noncompetes are so vauge, over reaching, and one sided that they are unenforceable from the get go, even assuming you don't live/work in a state such as California.
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF?
Company A laid off people...
People have no jobs....
Company B said, "hey you know we could use you..."
Company A says, "oh no you can't work there because well we don't want you to kill our business completely..."
GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!!!! Yes I am screaming here, but this patriotic act is completely misguided. The issue here is that people are laid off and they would like to put food and bread on their table. And if they need to travel to Canada so be it! This is what competition and capitalism is all about.
Want to know what might result?
Instead of hiring out of work American workers they will hire out of work workers from some other place. And then what spot is America? With more unemployed bitter people who say the government gets in their way!
Re:Pathetic. (Score:4, Insightful)
but after the first of the year they'll hire a signicant percentage of those laid off back when new budgets kick in.
That, and they'll hire some back as part-time or contract workers, and completely avoid the need to provide health care or benefits of any kind. I've seen that happen too: fire a regular full-time worker and then hire him or her back for just under the state's minimum requirement for "full time" status. They only work 39.5 hours/week, say, and the company saves the cost of the benefits. No effective difference in work load, but the employee gets screwed out of benefits. Yeah, it's kinda dirty, and totally violates the spirit of the law.
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:3, Insightful)
Like an ANON said to you, there is a freedom thing. If you stop the flow of people out of the country, you are stopping the flow of people into the country too. If canada gets pissed at us for quite literally stealing jobs from them, they won't exactly smile through it.
Meanwhile, I seem to recall articles saying that H1B's have been abused/etc so issuing more would solve one problem and create another ripe for abuse.
Maybe they need to come up with a new system that isn't as easy to game as current H1B systems are. If you RTFA you'd notice that the "non-hire" agreement has already expired as well, so it's kinda irrelevant at this point. Anyone laid off from Motorola that decides to go to RIM should be able to do so at this point, bar company politics deliberately breaking the law.
What I mean by the last comment is that many states don't like noncompetes. Currently, Illinois does uphold them unfortunately. However, instead of having the employees sign a noncompete (which they could contest in court), the two companies signed a noncompete (which it's impossible for an employee to contest in court)....essentially making it impossible for people to switch companies in that scenario. Specifically because they could just BS their reasoning for declining to hire someone such as "they didn't meet our qualifications" (with no explanation).
Re:Northbound Brain Drain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
I always thought it would be brilliant if the Democrats developed a policy platform based on competition. Real competition.
Where the vision would be a marketplace where the small guy could take down the big guy based on brains and good ideas. The only tool the big guy would have to fight back would would be brains. Not legal shenanigans based on deep pockets, old boys clubs and family fortunes.
The policy should proudly proclaim that today's underprivileged are encouraged to drive today's upper class back to the middle class and trade places with them.
Because, in Western society, the upper classes are in grave danger of starting to consider themselves royalty.
That would completely outflank the Republicans claim to be the pro-business party leaving them with only the faith communities as a support base. Unfortunately the Democrats have trouble organizing anything more complicated than a birthday party.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Motorola is no paragon of capitalism. They've been part of the military-industrial complex for a very long time.
Yes, and China suckered them out of a lot of money and technology too. Motorola is only reaping what they've sown, so far as I'm concerned.
I tend to say something along the lines of "your approval is neither sought nor required" in such a situation.
Back in the mid-eighties I worked for an outfit that really tried to nail their developers to the wall, contract-wise. When I was hired, I was given a bunch of papers to sign ... one of them was this completely outrageous non-complete/non-disclosure agreement. It said (among other bits of obnoxiousness) that any software I wrote, any products I developed, whether relevant to my work or the industry, or not, even if done on my own time, for a period of five years after I left employment with the company was the property of the company. In addition, I was not allowed to work as a software developer during the same period. I mean, what the Hell? Was I supposed to just switch careers after leaving the place? Anyway, that incredible document went on for some time in the same vein ... I'm not even a lawyer but I could see the ridiculousness of it. Probably it wouldn't have been enforceable, but I had an attorney look it over. He didn't even finish reading it before he said, "You'd be nuts to sign this." So I didn't.
... was that stupid NC/NDA. Sneaky. But I told her I had no intention of signing it.
Well, I got hired anyway, and apparently nobody noticed that I hadn't signed the thing because a few months later the HR guy's secretary comes by with a bunch of papers on a clipboard, and asked me to sign it at the bottom. "Just routine", she said, or words to that effect. I immediately noticed that there were several rather innocuous sheets on top, and underneath
She went away, and back comes the HR guy himself. He was nice enough, but he tried to convince me that I had to sign it, "Why is it a problem? Everyone else here signed it." I told him that if my continued employment was dependent upon that "agreement", that I would happily clean out my desk right then and there. He went away, and that was the last I heard of it. I was serious, however, and if they'd pushed the matter I'd have walked out right then and there. As it happens, I work in an "at-will" State: sometimes that sucks, but sometimes it works in your favor.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:4, Insightful)
and sell our jobs overseas.
What reason do you have to hate the rest of the world so much? If theres someone that can do your job better or cheaper, shouldn't he get it, regardless of what shithole country he is forced to live in?
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:2, Insightful)
and sell our jobs overseas.
What reason do you have to hate the rest of the world so much? If theres someone that can do your job better or cheaper, shouldn't he get it, regardless of what shithole country he is forced to live in?
Short answer: no.
Re:Move to CA (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but how would this be any less reactionary and ill-advised (i.e., to negate the freedom to contract) than passing the PATRIOT Act because of terrorism, etc.?
If we criticize Congress for passing overreactive laws in response to the fear of a terroristic death, shouldn't we also rightly criticize Congress for passing overreactive laws in response to the fear of an economic death?
I worry about Congress, in the current climate, passing an overrestrictive law destroying much of the freedom to contract.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Move to CA (Score:5, Insightful)
So how do you prevent someone from quitting or being poached and taking their technical or company specific knowledge to a competitor?
Pay the person what they are worth to your company!
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:5, Insightful)
"Cheaper" is just another word for exploitation. I think you're the one displaying hatred -- why do you think that workers in other countries don't deserve the rights, benefits and salaries that you get? I got mine, fuck the rest!
How's this: companies can outsource to people from these "shithole countries" to reduce their costs as long as they also reduce their salaries and bonuses to what execs in that country get.
We as a society need to remember that corporations exist at the pleasure of society, and must not be allowed to destroy society to make a buck.
Re:out of work and a place to go (Score:2, Insightful)
To be fair, over 50% of all shares in major stock markets today are held by institutional investors--mutual funds, banks, etc.
I have a bank account. But I sure as hell don't know what holdings my bank has. I doubt the average Joe on the street does, either.
So it's not me turning a blind eye to corporate practices when it's institutional investors who control the majority of the market.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
She went away, and back comes the HR guy himself. He was nice enough, but he tried to convince me that I had to sign it, "Why is it a problem? Everyone else here signed it." I told him that if my continued employment was dependent upon that "agreement", that I would happily clean out my desk right then and there. He went away, and that was the last I heard of it. I was serious, however, and if they'd pushed the matter I'd have walked out right then and there. As it happens, I work in an "at-will" State: sometimes that sucks, but sometimes it works in your favor.
Thank you. It's tough to do the right thing sometimes, and you took a big risk. Your integrity helps all of us, and our entire industry.
Campaign Contributions (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Move to CA (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-compete agreements are nothing short of employee abuse. When people are in need, they will sign just about anything to get that need taken care of. And when people want to earn money, these are exactly the people we don't want abused. Sometimes I think people honest enough to work for money are a rare breed of people indeed. There is no way you can honestly connect anti-competitive activities like that with free market. Such agreements need to be fair and balanced. For that arrangement to be fair, they should be paid for the duration of the contract whether they work or not.
In the end, it should be only fair that if an employee, especially one that was terminated for reasons that are NOT his fault, should be free of any restrictions to find new work and feed his family. The rights of individuals should trump the rights of companies each and every time. There used to be a thing called loyalty to the employee. You are probably too young to remember that ideal ever existing. Meanwhile, people are expected to be loyal to their employer regardless of how they are treated. And beyond all other reasoning, it is fair free market idealism to be able to choose not to work for someone who no longer offers "a good deal." You shop for better deals when you go shopping don't you?
Adam Smith is Outdated (Score:5, Insightful)
From a more practical perspective, we are already running a huge trade deficit. Some economists say this doesn't matter, but others say it risks nasty bubbles and major instability. If the US continues being the dumping ground for cheap products and services, this bubble risk grows as the trade imbalances create credit bubbles. Economists tend to under-estimate bubbles, perhaps because they are overconfident in their ability to "fix" them, so I will take the view of the "bubblers".
Further, many times those countries are cheaper because they lack regulations that keep us safe and healthy. They may have 60-hour work-weeks in asbestos-festered offices or work with dangerous chemicals and pollution in factories. It's unfair if we have to compete with regulations that they don't have.
Further, it would push us to all be Walmart greeters and shoes salesmen as "non-face" jobs shift to where the labor is cheaper. Diversity in careers would diminish, and lack of diversity is also a bubble-risk.
The "open borders" labor thinking just has too many unsolved problems. Adam Smith's equations need a rewrite to reflect risk and uncertainty better. Maximizing an economy based over-simplistic models is partly what got us into the current mess.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? So if, say MySQL AB (formerly one of the most widespread open source companies with employees in over 25 countries) were to employ some programmers in India or Russia (which they do), then, according to your wisdom, their Swedish executives should have their salaries forcibly reduced?
Obviously no executive would then employ foreign workers - you might as well just go the whole hog and make outsourcing illegal, which would effectively end global trade, since the production of practically everything requires some components sourced from China. And if you're going to make the argument that "sourcing" is different to "outsourcing" then it's really not - any legal action that enables trade but not direct employment will just result in independent companies, or self-employed individuals, in India/China producing "components" of specified work and selling them to their Western customer; there's no real difference between trading with an overseas company, and using a subsidiary overseas company, and if you legislate against one then the other will just be used.
Your plan doesn't sound like a very practical solution.
Re:Pathetic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn right. Let's get rid of limited liability too while we're at it since that's another unnecessary government interference in the marketplace.
Re:Adam Smith is Outdated (Score:4, Insightful)
Further, many times those countries are cheaper because they lack regulations that keep us safe and healthy.
I think this is right on. I'm in favor of letting jobs move around the world, but in order for this to work and be fair, the countries around the world need to operate at a common level of protection for workers, environment, etc. I think in equilibrium, this means that the US and Europe need to back off some, and Asia/Mexico/etc need to step up.
I'd like to see the first world countries motivate this through a differential level of tariffs that equalize costs for businesses between the countries.
This is not a quick or easy solution. You have to have it, though, or we'll get a race to the bottom as production flees to countries with the lowest regulatory costs.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:4, Insightful)
NO.
There are not enough good jobs to go around. That's why globalization is bad for everyone except the rich. It's a race to the bottom for everyone else, and if people in the USA have to compete for jobs with people living in the third world who would do the same job for peanuts, everyone ends up living in squalor and no one gets ahead. I'll go as far to say that I would rather see a job go unfilled forever than see it outsourced.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:3, Insightful)
No they don't, at least no more than you exist for the "pleasure of society". Corporations exist because it's a convenient way to organize a group of people. Society has nothing to do with it.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:2, Insightful)
One bad thing is that whatever the cheap labour do produce is actually crap, and not only do a lot of money flow out of the company and the country, but the chances for that company to survive diminishes. So what country A ends up with is a few rich fucks (CEOs etc), lots of unemployed but often skilled workers, and the rest of the money in another country. Good if you want to bleed a country, but bad if you are that country.
Have these "shithole countries" produce their own products and sell to the rest of the world and compete. China for instance has done this really well, I don't mind (other than that they have to fix their pollution problems), but outsourcing is the scourge of nations and I whole heartedly hope that some western leader can stop this in time.
And in the case of Motorola, fuck them, they are a horrible company that deserves to die. The only light I see for that company is Sanjay Jha, who thus far have impressed me, something that is hard to do on an epic scale.
Re:Move to CA (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonono, not rising wages, that's just one of the mechanisms of worth parity. For monetary instance, if a company would fail entirely and the company's entire fortunes rests on the shoulders of one developer, and if this developer were to leave and join the competition, then that would be the end of the company, then what is that one developer worth? I'd say a fair sight more than the CEO.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one question: Where did you find a woman willing to marry you?
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:3, Insightful)
Somewhere, though, there should be a balance between the $12k/year I enjoy now vs the $55k/year at my earning peak (with all the expense, hassle and stress that lifestyle mandates) to support a family. If the majority of people lived without consuming so much, this world would be a far better place, and we'd all be able to live well without demanding so much in income.
Heck, if everyone just scaled back and lived without TV, fancy cars, hairdos and nailjobs, fine clothes, or processed food, we'd all live happier, simpler lives.... unless we're TV installers, auto workers, hair stylists, garment workers, or food service workers, in which case wed be unemployed and living on $0. "Scaling back" is fine on a limited, individual basis, but you can't have the majority of people living "simplified" lives without actually reverting to pre-industrial subsistence farming. You're advocating throwing down the ladder by which we've ascended to our current level. You think your DSL is going to be maintained and operated by a bunch of guys working 2 hours a day? People aren't going to make do with less while working just as hard. I'm sure you're happy in your life, but it's not a panacea. The complicated lives of others are what makes much of your simplified life possible.
Aren't these sorts of agreements ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... a form of restraint of trade? A violation of the Sherman Anti-trust act?
If the labor market is similar to any other market and I negotiate with my competitor to split a market between us and not compete with them, I'd get a vacation at Club Fed. Striped pajamas and all.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes you think they can compete with everyone else in the world?
You did actually read the post right? Uh how about that they can keep overhead down much lower then everyone else while still having a comfortable life? Seems to me they would be better able to compete with low cost workers overseas.
What disadvantages would they have? Thrift stores aren't that bad, what does not having a TV have to do with education? Home school kids are usually smarter anyways than the homogenized product our pris..school system puts out
The hardest thing for me when I started working for $300 a week in CA was that I didn't have things anymore. It hurt a lot at first, but then I learned you can buy the well made used bluejeans at thrift stores. If you learn to cook well you can do a lot with barley and carrots. Bicycles are great exercise, and socializing and community are better then having a playstation. The only burden I ever see is the burden of entitlement. The irrational search for value in goods that has become a destructive religion. Looking for happiness on store shelves not in other people. Failure and hardship are subjective. Most people in this country view not owning a pool they swim in twice a year as some form of failure and driving an economy car as hardship.
Re:Sorry Motorola (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to be fair, and have no protectionist practices? Okay, when does India stop being protectionist? In case you didn't know, India is extremely protectionist.
And maybe India isn't wrong. I think it can be argued that it is the right, and responsibility of any nation to protect it's own national interests.
At the very least, it would be nice if US corporations stopped lying about the severe shortages of US workers. For example Microsoft wants to lay off Americans, and hire unlimited h1bs.
Microsoft Plans To Cut Jobs By 10 Percent
The reality is, this should be no surprise to anyone currently in the technology sector. The industry is bleeding and other companies such as Yahoo, Google, Sun, and Sony recently had massive layoffs.
http://www.newsoxy.com/microsoft/article11527.html [newsoxy.com]
How can msft claim that there are not enough US workers, at the same time that msft is laying off US workers? Just last March, Bill Gates sat before the US congress and insisted that the US needed unlimited numbers of h1bs. Without those h1bs - we are constantly told - US companies will be forced to ship jobs offshore - because there are just not enough Americans to do the jobs.
As always, the pop-media, seems to play softball with msft. The pop-media reporters just nod their heads, and ignore the elephant in the living room.
I guess the fun and games just never end.