Where did I say you should 'compel' someone to hire you? All I said (or rather implied) is that if you go to a place advertising employment opportunities, you pass all of their tests/criteria for hire and then they don't hire you because you work for someone with whom they have made one of these secret agreements, that is a dysfunctional market. The fact these agreements were generally secret says a lot about the people making them and the fact that they knew full well it would be viewed very unfavorably by their employees. When you are instituting something you need to 'keep secret' from your employees maybe you should really think hard about the validity of what you are doing.
And, when you boycott a company, you don't buy a product even if it pass all your functional test/criteria for consuming. But you don't buy it because the product is made by some company you happens to agree within your group/community that you are not going to buy from the company.
The difference is that one of my functional test/criteria is precisely that I want to support the company making it, so it couldn't possibly pass such a test. I don't buy things that are made with slave labor or child labor, that doesn't mean I am 'unfairly' discriminating against people that use slave or child labor :)
I think if companies want to engage in this sort of behavior they should put in the job adverts "Googlers need not apply" or something to that end. At least be forthright with your plans to 'no hire' simply because they may be employed with one of these multitude of companies that you made some secret pact with.
Going beyond that and reporting back to their present employers that they may be looking around is somewhat reprehensible and a breach of confidence and etiquette. People may be 'looking around' for a multitude of reasons, eventually if they plan on leaving their current employ they will need to have that conversation with their employer, but to 'poison the well' by immediately calling their employer if their resume crosses your desk just lacks in common decency and indicates you work in an environment I would never want to be part of, so come to think of it maybe you have done us all a favor :)
>The fact these agreements were generally secret says a lot about the people making them and the fact that they knew full well it would be viewed very unfavorably by their employees. When you are instituting something you need to 'keep secret' from your employees maybe you should really think hard about the validity of what you are doing.
And what about employee who goes to a job interview in secret - does that reflect on validity of his actions ? Again, the double standards are really bugging me with these sort of things, it's OK if a consumer does something, if a union pushes on employers and legislators to protect labor and act monopolistic/like a cartel - but when it's the other way around then all the sudden the moral fabric of the society is falling apart. It's likely that competing corporations are doing this because they are loosing more than they are gaining by stealing employees from each other. As long as they can't influence the legislators people will break the pact when it suits them, cartels have a very hard time enforcing their agreements and break up because of incentives for any individual entity to cheat. For the record I'm not an employer, I just hate double standards.
It depends I suppose. If your employer has absolutely no idea that you aren't happy, then I would say there is a communication breakdown going on. If your employees are 'testing the water' so to speak, and you are treating them fairly and paying them fairly then they will discover that in looking at other options, no harm, no foul. If you are treating them poorly, paying them poorly, etc.. they will also discover that, but then again they should discover that.
I think this situation of employees looking around could really only upset people who desire the kind of blind company loyalty that simply doesn't exist anymore, for multiple reasons including a lack of loyalty/dedication from the employer.
Double standards implies treating two people in identical situations differently. This is not the case here as employees and employers aren't in identical situations, there is a definite information/power asymmetry in play.
Also, on one hand, there is a collusion between two parties. For an employee 'looking around' there is no collusion. Now if that same employee secretly tried to get his co-workers to quit and leave the employer high and dry at some vital point (or really any point), then they would be acting like just as big of douchebags as the kind of people that make these sort of agreements. But I haven't heard that is happening. I have basically heard companies say 'ohhh it is hard to retain super talented people because others are always trying to lure them away', yep, that sounds accurate. The solution isn't 'I know, let's all agree to NOT take each others good employees' but rather 'how can we stem attrition by understanding why these talented people are leaving and taking steps to fix the problem?' Then again I suppose making shady agreements over the phone is a lot simpler.
Also, talking to myself now, upon further thought I think the proper parallel here is between employees looking for another job and employers planning on firing/laying off employees. The latter is generally not done in the open, or with any sort of advance notice, thus it isn't clear the former should be either.
Because they are market actors at one end of transaction. This is not about "rights" other than property rights - nobody is being forced in to anything here - you don't have a right to work for someone, they have a right to refuse your service for whatever reason - plain and simple. Unfortunately there are laws that restrict this freedoms because most voters are workers and not employers.
You keep talking about "employers", but that isn't what you mean, and it's dishonest. The generic "employer" has few restrictions at all. In most jurisdictions, I am quite free, as an individual acting in my personal capacity, to hire and fire, for example, a maid, with very few restrictions at all.
What you are talking about are corporations. Corporations are artificial constructs that exist at the whim of society. They have no inherent rights, property or otherwise. They have those privileges which we choose to explicitly bestow upon them.
Your next point will be that corporations are made up of people and invested in by people. This is true, but irrelevant. The corporation is a distinct entity, and the epic disaster that is limited liability ensures that its effect on the market is skewed from that of a human being.
Corporations are not people, and should not be treated as such.
>The generic "employer" has few restrictions at all. In most jurisdictions, I am quite free, as an individual acting in my personal capacity, to hire and fire, for example, a maid, with very few restrictions at all.
That may be true in the US to some extent, but it's nowhere near true in Europe (where I'm from). Labor laws apply to everyone and protect labor in various way from competition.
You keep talking about "rights" - where am I claiming any rights for "corporations" ? Corporations are simply property in this case, preventing corporations from making these agreements is violating the rights of owners to manage their property.
Considering these are US companies making an agreement about US employees, where else is relevant?
> Corporations are simply property in this case, preventing corporations from making these agreements is violating the rights of owners to manage their property.
By taking advantage of the corporate structure society has over-generously granted them, the investors have agreed to surrender their rights.
They can get most of them back by dispensing with the corporate structure and acting in their own personal capacities, without the market-distorting characteristics granted to corporations.
