The Justice Department has reached an agreement with six major Silicon Valley companies to settle allegations that they colluded to stifle competition for employees by restricting the way they could poach workers from each other.
The settlement, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia late Friday, names Google Inc., Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and Walt Disney Corp.’s Pixar Animation Studios.
The Justice Department had been investigating whether the companies pledged not to use “cold calls” to recruit each other’s employees, as part of partnership agreements. The government was concerned that such promises amounted to a form of collusion to avoid bidding wars for employees with specialized skills, and in turn hold down payroll expenses.
These agreements, the Justice Department said, “eliminated a significant form of competition to attract highly skilled employees,” depriving employees of access to better job opportunities.
The settlement bars the companies from entering into such “no-solicitation agreements” for employees for a period of five years.
In court documents, the Justice Department cited various partnership agreements among the companies from 2005 through 2007 in which both sides agreed not to make unsolicited job offers to computer scientists, engineers and other workers with specialized skills.
Although the companies argued the restrictions had little effect on their hiring practices, they evidently believed the rules helped them retain employees.
For instance, in February 2006 and again in March 2007, Apple complained to Google about apparent breaches of their mutual cold-calling restrictions, the Justice Department alleged in court documents. Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s board in August 2006 and remained a director until last year when he stepped down because of escalating competition between the companies.
Friday’s court filing didn’t elaborate on how Google resolved Apple’s complaint.
Apple also forged a no cold-calling agreement in 2007 with Pixar, a company formerly…