The Walt Disney Company, including Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Two Pic MC, have agreed to pay $100 million to settle (PDF) claims that they conspired to lower the wages of animators and visual effects employees.
The agreement between the "Disney Defendants" and former workers could be the final settlement for a series of legal claims against entertainment and high-tech companies that were accused of having "no poach" agreements that limited how much they recruited each others' workers.
Combined with earlier settlements with Sony, DreamWorks, and Blue Sky Studios, the class of animator plaintiffs will get about $160 million, assuming US District Judge Lucy Koh approves the settlements currently on the table.
A series of wage-fixing claims ensued from a 2010 government antitrust lawsuit over recruitment at high-tech companies including Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe. The government said the companies agreed to limits on how they hired each others' workers, which artificially suppressed wages in the tech sector. That led to class-action civil claims against the companies on behalf of current and former employees. The claims against several high-tech defendants paid out $415 million in 2015.
Source:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/disney-will-pay-out-100m-over-wage-suppression-claims/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @02:32AM
So who's going to jail for stealing millions out of the pockets of the middle class...
Oh, no one... again...
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday February 07 2017, @07:08AM
No. And we have to get cracking on repealing the laws that are making it SLIGHTLY more difficult to continue to do so...