DOJ Investigating SV over collusion to hold down wages.

An interesting story reported in the Gawker (the home of the remnants of Vallywag the SV Snark Blog ) the some of the big names of tech are being investigated for colluding by not poaching staff from each other.

The original stories where by the Washington Post and the NYT 

The NYT says

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.

As Gawker says its interesting that People make a big play of being all about the free market – but when it comes to us grunts on the ground “Not so much”

Fair Play on Redundancy Pay Video

Since Redundancy pay was introduced in 1965 its value has decline drastically in real terms Due to real term increases in wage levels and inflation, the current value of SRP is just 56% of the UK’s average weekly wage.

The Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle is currently attempting to secure legislative change in the House of Commons via his Private Members Bill, which calls for the calculation mechanism to be reviewed.

On Friday the bill had its first reading an survived this round with enough MPs turning up for the debate to make sure the bill did not get talked out.

Unions Together have done a short campaign video

How employees are fighting back against sharp practice by employers in the states

Should You Get Paid While Your Computer Boots? is an article on slashdot that comments on the recent trends in the USA for employers to try and dodge paying people while they are at work by claiming that waiting while a computer boost is not working time.

This was sparked by legal blog that covered the court cases that some employees are taking against their employers that are trying to get them to do unpaid work at the start and end of shifts to boot and shut down pc’s which in some companies amounts to an extra 1/2 and hour a day unpaid labour.

I hope that this is one of those crappy HR practices that do not make it across the pond but i’me sure some bean counter is gearing up to screw 1/2 an hours work out of some poor buggers.

Bad Employer Fremantle – try’s to take down workers website

Disgusting that a company in dispute with it’s employees (care home employees represented by Unison) feel’s the need to bully a well know union news website (labourstart) into taking the campaign news they where carrying down with some dubious legal threats.

Needless to say this has backfired and the information taken down has now been put up  in nine languages on a different server, in a different country, with a new name wewillnotbesilenced.

There is a facebook group as well as a petition to raise the profile.

I can feel an emergency prop at the TUC coming on 🙂

 
Slashdot It!

Alan Sugar Encourages Bullying Bosses ?

A could have been contender for king of  British technology entranapeurship has been blamed for a rise in the number of employment tribunals , as macho bosses copy the behavior seen on programs like the apprentice and land themselves with costly legal bills.

The number of ETs last year was 115,000 compared to 86,181 in 2004-2005, Employment Lawyer John Muir says that.

 Employers should not copy Alan Sugars behavior, they should remember that The Apprentice is purely a TV show and not real life. Employment law requires certain procedures to be adhered too”

Mandy Telford  from Unite added

” All employees deserve respect  and to be treated with dignity – the sort of bullying behavior seen on TV programs like The Apprentice can cave devastating”

Peppone Comments:

It’s sad the Sir Allen’s Amstrad could have been a contender in the world market but in the end the demands of producing a high quality PC/Computing product was to much for the short sighted mind set of the vast majority of uk Businesses and financiers.

Where are the British equivalents of Elon Musk who using the fortune he made from paypal  to enter the space race as a private individual – watching the test launches of space x over the internet late at night one brought back memories of the Apollo programme.

Original Story from the metro:

British Companies ‘failing India’s lowest caste workers’

Leading British companies are being accused of supporting a system of  apartheid in India by failing to ensure that they treat members of the country’s lowest caste equally.

The International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), which campaigns on behalf of the caste, pejoratively known as ‘untouchables’, says UK companies with operations in India are not monitoring their staff and are refusing to sign up to positive action to combat the problem. Dalits are often excluded from work in India and do not have the educational opportunities available to India’s middle classes.

The IDSN has approached Standard Chartered, which employs 15,000 people in India, HSBC (25,000), Shell (10,000), Barclays and ICI and asked if they monitor recruitment and workforces. It also asked them to sign up to the
10 so-called Ambedkar principles, which enshrine affirmative action against discrimination.

The Observer

One does wonder what BT Mahindra’s and other telecom’s companies policies are on this matter.

Increase in Statutory Holiday Entitlement

The initial increase in statutory holiday entitlement from 4 to 4.8 weeks comes into force on 1st October 2007, with the second increase in entitlement from 4.8 to 5.6 weeks coming into force on 1st April 2009.

The Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (previously the DTI) has now published a holiday entitlement ready reckoner on its website which enables employees to calculate their increased holiday entitlement.

It is reproduced below:

The statutory entitlement for a member of staff will depend on when their leave year begins; to work out the entitlement, read across the table from the start date of the leave year.

For example: A member of staff whose leave year begins on 1 April will have a holiday entitlement of:

Leave year start:	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
1 November	4.07 weeks	4.8 weeks	5.27 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 December	4.13 weeks	4.8 weeks	5.33 weeks	5.6 weeks
	2007	2008	2009	2010
1 January	4.2 weeks	4.8 weeks	5.4 weeks	5.6 weeks
	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010
1 February	4.27 weeks	4.8 weeks	5.47 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 March	4.33 weeks	4.8 weeks	5.53 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 April	4.4 weeks	4.8 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 May	4.47 weeks	4.87 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 June	4.53 weeks	4.93 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 July	4.6 weeks	5 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 August	4.67 weeks	5.07 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 September	4.73 weeks	5.13 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks
1 October	4.8 weeks	5.2 weeks	5.6 weeks	5.6 weeks

To work out the number of days you are entitled to, multiply the number of weeks given by the number of days usually worked (E.G. 4.2 weeks x 5 days = 21 days, 4.2 weeks x 4 days = 16.8 days etc).

Vodafone union recognition dispute Part #2

Connect is at a key meeting today over the Vodafone union recognition dispute I mentioned before.

Voda have been stalling and putting this one off so fingers crossed for a good result.

More Help For Failed Pension schemes

A nice ray of light in today’s budget! Gordon Brown announced increased support for the FAS ( Financial Assistance Scheme) – which provides support to members of pension schemes where the employer went insolvent.

Collapsed occupational schemes have been a bit of an own goal (for the government), so it is nice to see at least some common sense emerge. Thanks to labor and capital blog and to Tigamoo.

New compensation limits from 1 Feb

The Government has carried out its annual review of the tribunal compensation limits. The upper limit for the compensatory award for unfair dismissal will rise from £58,400 to £60,600.

The cap on a week’s pay for the purpose of calculating redundancy payments and for calculation of the basic award in unfair dismissal cases goes up to £310.