Wage Fixing
The following companies have special agreements with Google and are part of the ‘Do Not Cold Call’ list…”
–a confidential Google Internal Memo
It is illegal for employers who are in the same industry (i.e. competitors) to engage in wage fixing. Wage fixing is when these employers “agree” to set wages lower than what these employees would be paid if the competitor were freely competing. It is also illegal for competitors to agree not to hire each others’ employees, which is in effect a mechanism designed to keep wages lower.
In December 2015, in one of the largest wage fixing cases in history, Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel agreed to resolve a wage fixing case for $415 million. That case involved a claim that these companies made “No Cold Call” agreements, whereby they agreed not to cold call each company’s high-tech employees.