In the past, courts have prohibited a group of D.C. lawyers from coming together to decide how much they should charge per hour and cracked down on Ivy League schools that met to discuss a cap on financial aid for students.
At the same time, judges have allowed thousands of music copyright holders to create an organization that makes it easier to license their songs to restaurants and building managers.
"It becomes a question of, is this a joint venture that makes a new product and creates efficiencies, or are they really just trying to get together and set a floor?" said Debra Valentine, a lawyer at O'Melveny & Myers and former general counsel at the Federal Trade Commission.
Barring workers from sharing information about salary and job conditions bothers Amy Dean, the executive officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, which covers Silicon Valley.
Dean acknowledges there are some legal concerns surrounding salary information, but said it is in the best interest of employees to band together.
If workers cannot directly share financial data, there are ways to spread the word about what others are earning, techies say. The Writers Guild site and others encourage members to refer each other to salary surveys or Web sites that have salary calculators. The guild also urges members to go offline to chat or send private e-mails to people with questions.
That's what recently happened on an mailing list guided by Mitch Arnowitz.
The list, designed for advertising and marketing workers with an interest in technology, does not directly prohibit people from talking about salary. But in an e-mail exchange, one correspondent referred another to the Web site Salary.com and to a fresh study of marketing salaries by a national group, said Arnowitz, director of business development at Netpreneur.org in Reston.
Glass Ceiling
Fewer women hold board seats at large technology firms than at other companies, according to a study by Catalyst Inc., a New York nonprofit group.
The survey of Fortune 1000 firms revealed that women hold 9.3 percent of the board seats at computer, software and networking companies, compared with 10.9 percent of board seats overall at participating firms.
Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. were among the larger technology-oriented businesses to have two or more women on their boards, an important measure because it is a proxy for women's ability to network and achieve prominent leadership roles within the business world, Catalyst officials said.
On Tap . . .
New year, new employment and networking events. Hearty tech-job seekers might want to check out the Creative Network gathering, scheduled for Jan. 22 at the 18th Street Lounge in downtown Washington, or the latest Pink Slip party on Jan. 29 at eCiti cafe in Tysons Corner. Visit www.justshowup.com and www.pinkslipevent.com for more information.
Join Carrie Johnson and special guest Leslie Forte, manager of Web operations for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to talk about women in high tech careers, today at 11 a.m. at WashingtonJobs.com at www.washingtonpost.com. Send tips and gripes to johnsonca@washpost.com
