Apple Retailer Facing Class Action Suit Over Employee Bag Checks 353
aitikin writes "Former Apple employees say the company requires workers to stand around without pay for up to 30 minutes a day while waiting for managers to search their bags for stolen merchandise."
The filing. It looks pretty illegal: mandatory unpaid checks of personal belongings before and after work and all breaks.
Sounds like a slam-dunk (Score:5, Informative)
If Apple's actions are being described correctly, that's time that clearly belongs to be on the clock.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Informative)
Most loss in retail is employee theft. When I worked at a department store, the loss prevention guys were at the doors at closing, letting employees out and checking their bags. When they were patrolling the floor during business hours, they kept a closer eye on employees than on customers. That's just a fact of life no matter what your retail segment is. In fact, I'd bet it's worse for Apple stores because their products are small, easily stolen, and fetch much higher prices than razor blades.
Evil Apple (Score:2, Informative)
In California, under state law it is very expensive for an employer to employ shenanigans like this. The fines can be quite large, the litigation can be quite expensive, and there is a potential for the employees to be paid wages while the issue is being resolved by the courts (at least as I understand the law). There is a reason why employers don't like California regulations, employees have the potential to grab the employer by the balls and twist and twist if the state EDD finds that the charges have merit.
Anyway, this case is just another example of just how evil Apple is as a company. It is unfortunate because I like its products (mostly) and I've owned several over the years.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Informative)
Ford paid his workers well so they could afford his card.
No, he didn't. He didn't even pay them well so they could afford his cars.
Ford paid them well because he was suffering horribly from employee turnover as they worked for him long enough to learn their job and then moved on to a better-paid job elsewhere. Increasing their wages lead to a dramatic reduction in employee turnover, and increased productivity enough to justify the extra pay.
I've no idea why this urban legend continues to flourish when it's so clearly retarded. If he'd paid them more so they could afford his cars, they were at least as likely to spend the money with a competitor, or spend it on something more useful to them.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:4, Informative)
My father had a well paying job with great benefits doing repair work for a public utility. Every couple of years they were buying new hand tools, wrenches and such. Did the old tools wear out or break? No, they simply disappeared.
I work doing repairs, and have to replace missing tools all the time - but not because of theft. Occasionally you drive off after forgetting your screwdriver sitting next to whatever you were working on.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm with AC, what happened with HR? I think everyone would like to hear a story where HR benefited the employees and not themselves.
In the company I work for, our HR recently started an initiative to make salary scales and schemes more transparent and fair. We're a very large organisation that has evolved from one very large merger around a decade ago and very many acquisitions both before and since then.
Because of this growth, we've generally had a lot of people with different pay schemes and structures in place, sometimes even with vastly different incomes and benefits for the exact same jobs.
This prompted the idea to try and make everything more fair and even by implementing a new system. Doing so, they could've gone a few different ways - including some ways that would not have been in the employees best interests at all. What they've done however is something I'm extremely impressed with.
All new employees will be under the new system. Existing employees are given an offer to migrate in to the new system (for generally very similar or only slightly more pay than currently), however they can decline to do so and remain on their existing structure if they so choose. The new structure is based on "job families" and "job levels" whereby each job family describes (very generally) a type of work, and the job levels define the seniority/experience/complexity within that family. Each job level (regardless of family) has a specific pay scale associated with it and so while you can't know exactly what a co-worker is earning, you can know they are within a particular range.
Should an existing employee who did not choose to go in to the new structure change job in the future, they'll change in to the new structure when they do so (essentially like a new hire for that job; but of course taking their existing experience/skills/etc within the company in to account). Beyond this, the ability to discuss the position within the new structure is also not only allowed but also encouraged so that every employee feels they have been put in to the family and level that truly fits their work. The members of my team for example were all put in to a job family that I feel doesn't fit the real work that we do, so I've asked for a meeting with HR tomorrow to get them in to the job family that I feel fits better (technically the same "level" so no difference in pay; but better options for advancement in the future and just generally a better fit for the actual job). I don't foresee it being a big problem for this change (but who knows, maybe I'll reply to this post tomorrow with an angry rant... let's see!)
So overall, I'm pretty happy with the way HR has handled this process and applaud them for doing it in a way that no employee is going to feel short changed or in a worse situation because of it.
Re:I have no sympathy (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure how reliable these citations are but I found these which contradict your assertion. Sounds like most pilots are paid for "flight time", and in fact are NOT compensated for when they are sitting at the gate.
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/278808/ [airliners.net]
http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-pilot-salaries.html [weebly.com]
http://www.pilotcareer.info/Airline_Pay___Life.html [pilotcareer.info]
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:4, Informative)
Except they're not mutually exclusive. Other Apple stores may have the same policy, but the search is done on company time (there's nothing to say the manager can't search the bags prior to shift end and then hand them to the employee as they leave).
The complaint isn't about bag searches (most places have them in retail). It's about being forced to wait half an hour after shift end, on unpaid time to leave. Yeah, it's only half an hour, but given Apple retail store pay, that's easily another $5-10 a day (Apple tends to pay on the higher end of the scale).
So either other Apple stores do it better with the same policy and it's just a couple of douchebag managers (way too common on retail - a "manager" in retail parlance doesn't pay much more than a floor salesperson but has more power so the Peter Principle is very strong), or there's been a recent policy change. It's definitely not something that's been around a while (or we'd have heard it much earlier - Apple may be secretive, but ex-employees tend to make injustices transparent).