Approximately 60,000 Silicon Valley workers to the thumbs up to pursue a lawsuit accusing Apple and other tech companies of conspiring to drive down pay by not poaching each other’s staff, after a federal appeals court refused to let the defendants appeal a class certification order, reports “Reuters” (http://tinyurl.com/md6m8en).
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has let stand an order by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, to let the workers sue as a group, and pursue what the defendants said could exceed $9 billion of damages, the article adds. The case began in 2011 when five software engineers sued Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel and other firms over an alleged “overarching conspiracy” to suppress pay by agreeing not to recruit or hire each other’s employees.