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You might be interested in a couple of actual facts.
The company which brought the lawsuit is Alcatel, or in longer words--
All rights reserved © Copyright 2002 Compagnie Financière Alcatel, Paris, France
A French company, not an American company, French as in France a country that is part of Europe as in not American.

This shows that it is as well a company run largely by with very French sounding names

And apparently their HQ is in Paris as well and by the exchange codes I don't think they mean a Paris anywhere in the USA.

A little history shows that they have recently been buying up a lot of American companies but they are still European.

So, yes Abigail, the world doesn't stop at the US borders and neither does the practice of screwing employees.

And if it didn't get to court in Europe it could well be because they are too busy creating International laws about what kind of grass and at what Longitude and Lattitude cows have to eat in order for something to be called Roquefort cheese or any of another 570 foods.

Do you really think the US government would allow French laws to have any jurisdiction on US soil?

The fact that Alcatels headquarters is in Paris is irrelevant. It's US law that's used. I used to work for the same (US) company in both the UK and the US - and believe me, the contract had quite some differences in both countries.

US based companies don't get away with giving their employees of European offices only 10 or 15 days vacation a year - they are subject to Europeans laws; just as European companies are subject to US law for their USA based offices.

As for the "spirit" of those companies, don't forget the law suit was stared when the company wasn't owned by Alcatel yet. And don't get the impression that if Alcatel buys a company everything is going to change instantly. That will take quite some time, if ever.

Abigail

You said

So, if you people are generalizing in this thread (as in "most compani
+es do ...") they are just generalizing for the USA (and mean "most Am
+erican companies do ..."). The world doesn't stop at the US borders.
[download]

And I was pointing out that Alcatel is not an American company -- Just a European company perfectly happy to take advantage of USA laws to screw an ex-employee. You can back-pedal all you would like. If Alcatel, being a European company, was so friggin' wonderful they would have stopped the lawsuit.

Update: Oh as well, Europeans seem to have a short memory when they decide to beat up other areas practices. The industrial revolution in Europe wasn't all that long ago. The general enslavement of the Indian ( not "native American" ) population by the british. The general enslavement of the South Africans, as well as others, by the Dutch. Do European history books still include little facts like indebtured servitude? So the long history of corporations screwing employees, willing or enslaved, goes back to long before the USA ever got started.