Every time I read an article about this I fell like I'm at The Onion. Drive ++down++ engineer wages? Really? Does anyone on planet earth feel like engineer wages are/were artificially low?
Yes. Just because wages are high does not at all prevent them from being suppressed.
There's actually pretty strong evidence that wages are suppressed across the board in tech. In near-perfect labor market equilibrium, you'd expect employers to not have open headcount for extended periods because if they're unable to hire for a position they rationally increase its salary. Yet in tech you see many/most companies with near-permanent open headcount who still steadfastly refuse to increase salaries outside certain predefined bands.
Whether such behavior is consciously profit-driven or unconsciously motivated ("non-managers should never make more than $200k") I don't know but it's largely the reason for the longterm hiring crunch.
based on anecdotal evidence, top engineer salaries start capping out at 150k, when in reality this should go into the 300, 400, 500k range like lawyers and finance people make.
it's already starting to turn, so i'm hopeful.
i.e., not the stock lottery which doesn't apply to 99% of people.
In a larger sense, argument isn't about what the affected workers "should" be paid, it's about who gets to decide: the potential recruits or their prospective employers.
As someone who believes that free markets generally "find a way" (in spite of information asymmetry), I'm hesitant to endorse the government's view point. One good thing that can come of this is more of these top-notch engineers get fed up with this sort of behaviour and start more startups. At the same time, I'm not going to shed any tears for Apple or Google if they lose in the courts.
The median salary would likely fall, the mean would likely rise (or stay around the same) but the very top salaries would rise dramatically, in line with what these same players make on the free market as brand ambassadors.
This brings to light an uncomfortable truth: incentives are not really aligned for the very top talent and the majority of workers. To extend the sports analogy, Roger Federer recently opposed spreading prize money more equally in the grand slams, saying essentially that players should win more to get more money. (right now tennis prize money is essentially a power law distribution).