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.
The incredible irony of.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Interesting)
hiring people to work in your store who can't afford the product.
Ford paid his workers well so they could afford his card.
Apple store has to search it's workers to prevent theft. Maybe if they paid them better they wouldn't have to worry about this.
well, they're geniuses, so they might get sneaky!
how they think this isn't unpaid overtime though... it's pretty fucking obvious.
also, who is checking the managers bags? they must be managers only in title because I've never seen a real manager do shit like bag checks.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:4, Funny)
> also, who is checking the managers bags?
Obviously, VP of Bag Checking and Chief Bag Checking Officer, duh.
D.O.U.C etc. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that this is only at two stores, I would bet heavily that this is two managers' policy, not Apple's. Certainly at previous crappy jobs (not at apple) I've met managers that have thought it was entirely okay to try and make you turn up half an hour early for things like team briefs and bag searches. The head office HR department had a shit fit, and said it was nothing to do with the company when I phoned up and suggested that that violated minimum wage law.
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Sears Payment Systems did this back in the 80s. I eventually got canned by them for excessive tardiness due to a certain manager taking a dislike to me, making a point of holding me up for pointless "discussions" every 2 or 3 days, and then refusing to acknowledge any connection to the string of late logins she'd thus engineered for me.
Ya often as not it is a local tinpot dictator (Score:3)
Back in the day I had a roommate that worked at a Baskin Robins that was breaking all kinds of employment rules. For example they were paid minimum wage but if the cash in the drawer didn't match up to what he thought it should, he'd take it out of their pay. Well employment law was the only thing he was breaking, I called the corporate office and it turned out that they had a rule that you had to pay more than minimum wage anyhow. You find that with chains sometimes, they have internal wage rules higher th
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.
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It's Apple's HR. They'll probably release a statement along the lines of "Look, deal with it or we'll replace you with someone from the long line of hipsters BEGGING to work at this store."
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).
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I fail to see the difference.
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Treating your employees like criminals is stupid
. Our government spies on us every day.
I fail to see the difference
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is, the people in government are supposed to be our employees, not us theirs, so it's even worse.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Insightful)
you are 100% right about Ford, but for better or worse the world is different now in many ways
Corporations now expect a profit margin so large, the only way to make it happens is to produce their products in low income countries... very VERY sad.
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US auto production, both "foreign" and "domestic" global brands, is massive. We even export BMWs to China.
Efficiency means we don't need a vast number of workers to do that.
The rest of the world figured out how to MAKE THINGS, and the decades-long post-WWII boom (WWII was the best thing to happen to the US in the last century) finally petered out.
Now we must compete, and in many cases the US competes effectively.
Have some Lincoln:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/12/13/for-the-63rd-straight-year-at-least-thi [dailyfinance.com]
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Apple Store wages are plenty to buy a lot of products they sell. Not everything, but I doubt that 90% of electronics store employees could buy the most expensive 20% of the products on sale either. That's besides the point because retail theft isn't about "oh, I can't afford this and want to own it" anyway. It's about "oh, I can resell this and supplement my income quite handsomely". Most of the stuff people shoplift from supermarkets (staff or customers) isn't stuff that's very overall expensive, but stuff that's easy to steal and fences well like batteries and razors. High value per unit volume, lots of volume available, fungible.
Apple basically has no reason to be doing these checks because there's nothing about their employees or product that makes it any more likely to be stolen than anywhere else. They hardly keep anything out on the shopfloor for deus' sake.
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.
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Most loss in retail is employee theft.
That's just a fact of life no matter what your retail segment is.
Not necessarily. It may depend on the size of the store and how it's managed, but in my more than a decade of working in retail the shoplifting has been by customers, not staff.
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Most loss in retail is employee theft.
That is likely not entirely true (if even partially true). I worked in retail for quite some time and that was the mantra of every head of loss prevention but one. That one explained that the statistics that statement is based on are flawed. The correct interpretation of that study was that employees caught stealing from the store admitted to stealing more from the store than outsiders caught stealing admitted. The original study that is the source of that statement was based on interviews with people caugh
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.
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Wasn't it simply because Henry Ford himself used that as a justification.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Highly unlikely, a few years back I was doing some work for Volvo and in the parking lot there was a rather overwhelming share of Volvos. Sure, nobody expects you to sell or scrap an existing car that works well but somehow I don't think a Ford worker arriving in a new non-Ford car would get very well received by neither coworkers nor management, it's a pretty clear message you wouldn't want to eat your own dog food. That they could use the money for other things sure, but if they bought a car I'd say it was a very safe bet it'd be a Ford.
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More likely the employee car scheme was pretty generous
I know our scheme is where I work
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure I follow... Perhaps a Unix analogy?
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:4)
I think you should update this page [wikipedia.org] then with the true reasons including all your references.
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Maybe if they paid them better they wouldn't have to worry about this.
You expect people in a jewelry store to afford all the jewelry in the store? If you handle one of Intel's E7-8870 processors it sells for $4616 in bulk, a pretty solid post-tax income if you could say it broke and sell it on eBay instead. Sure bring out the Apple hate but I'm thinking they DO have to worry about this almost regardless of how much they pay them. Never mind that I've had a friend that's been a grocery store manager, even for absurdly small sums you have employee theft. As long as they think t
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Not necessarily. There's always someone who'll thieve no matter how well you pay them; it's human nature.
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Just because your employees cant afford the product you sell does not mean its okay for them to steal. You cant justify theft. Should every person who works for Ferrari be entitled to afford an Ferrari (Car analogy!)? If Apple chooses to pay shit then don't work for them. Retail jobs are high turnover because its unskilled labor and they don't want to pay 30k+/yr + benefits to someone who could be replaced by any schmuck who walks in of the street. So they pay shit in the hopes that the employee gets tired
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One piece at a time?
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It worked for Radar O'Reilly in the 50s.
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And for Johnny Cash.
Re:The incredible irony of.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
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.
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another reason to patronize an Apple VAR (Score:2, Funny)
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Typical (Score:2)
2/3rds of loss in retail is from employee theft. At a place like Apple outlets, where the products are small, expensive, and easily turned over for cash to friends or pawn shops, I'd imagine it's even higher. Not that this fact excuses forcing unpaid overtime on your workers, but I'm not surprised they're doing bag checks.
Re:Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
2/3rds of loss in retail is from employee theft. At a place like Apple outlets, where the products are small, expensive, and easily turned over for cash to friends or pawn shops, I'd imagine it's even higher. Not that this fact excuses forcing unpaid overtime on your workers, but I'm not surprised they're doing bag checks.
The bag check isn't the problem.
Employers reserve that right even in countries with real employer protection. What isn't Kosher is the fact they have to do it unpaid. If an employer wants to screen you on your way out that time must be paid for by the employer.
Same for when an employee takes a break. In retail environments your breaks are timed (I've even heard they are even unpaid in the US), so a screening should not be permitted to detract from that time.
I work in a secure facility, I clock on from the first the moment I enter the building. Even if it takes me 5 minutes to get to my desk. Then again I work in a country that punishes employers for taking advantage of employees.
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I work in a country that punishes employers for taking advantage of employees.
May I cordially ask which country is it? (Germany is my 1st bet...)
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May I cordially ask which country is it? (Germany is my 1st bet...)
From his posting history I'd say Australia is a safe bet - but same here in Norway. Currently they don't have a wall clock where I work so I'm awarded five minutes on the online check-in to compensate me for the time to take the elevator, get to my office, log in to my computer and sign in. So if I check in at 8:05 AM wall time, it registers as if I arrived at 8 AM sharp. First place I've worked that actually have a clock system though, usually I've just filled out time sheets manually.
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May I cordially ask which country is it? (Germany is my 1st bet...)
From his posting history I'd say Australia is a safe bet - but same here in Norway. Currently they don't have a wall clock where I work so I'm awarded five minutes on the online check-in to compensate me for the time to take the elevator, get to my office, log in to my computer and sign in. So if I check in at 8:05 AM wall time, it registers as if I arrived at 8 AM sharp. First place I've worked that actually have a clock system though, usually I've just filled out time sheets manually.
Yep, Australia.
Not quite as good as Norway when it comes to workers rights.
I'm covered by an agreement that specifies if I work, I get paid (but my employer is a bit of a special case). Other Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA) in Oz give you time off in lieu rather than overtime pay but compensation for time worked is enshrined in law here. Some EBA's are abusive even though the courts crack down on it as much as they can.
Even though we get clocked by the security system, we still do timesheets
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Similar protections exist in the UK; a call centre had such shitty software it could take 20 minutes for the tracking software to load, and so they made people go in 20minutes before work in order to log on. They were taken to court over this and lost.
I have no sympathy (Score:2, Interesting)
No sympathy whatsoever.
As an airline pilot I do not get paid while I wait in line and am checked by the TSA. I do not get paid while I wait in line for customs. I do not get paid while I get the flight paperwork and verify it is safe and legal. I do not get paid while preparing and inspecting the airplane for flight. I do not get paid while I wait for everyone to get on the plane and coordinate with gate, ramp, fuel, maintenance and catering to ensure an on-time departure.
Re:I have no sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)
I would imagine that aiurplane pilots are not paid by the hour, which these guys are.
Re:I have no sympathy (Score:5, Interesting)
They are actually, but every minute they're not paid has been negotiated by the airline unions. If you've ever had your flight delayed due to maintenance after they've pushed back from the gate? Yeah, that's an asshole pilot and cabin crew who knew the plane wasn't ready to fly, but wanted to start the clock on their paycheck.
They don't get paid until the doors are closed and they're away from the gate, so sitting on the runway with no air conditioning is better for them than delaying your boarding. I won't say they don't deserve to be paid, but inconveniencing 300 people to please 10 isn't the right way to do things. Then topping that with federal laws that don't allow people to get up and go to the bathroom, or turn their phones on because the plane is "taxiing" technically even though it's sitting there with the wheels off, or whatever they're doing to it.
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Nonsense. The cabin crew are paid from the time they start preparing the aircraft for boarding and helping to seat people. The pilots are paid from before they even enter the aircraft because they need to make sure they have up-to-date paperwork and check in with the airline.
Unless you have citations otherwise?
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]
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My citation is the contract governing how I am paid. Pay time begins when all exterior doors are closed and the parking brake is released. Pay time ends when the first exterior door is opened (our contract says the it should only be the main cabin door, but in reality the clock stops as soon as the rampers pop the bag door).
And yes, pay is by the hour. The excuse of the airlines pushing for these pay rules is that our hourly rate is high enough that it covers all of that stuff too. They'd be happy to sw
Re:I have no sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi,
Hmm, I believe airline pilots are a little bit different to other hourly employees.
They're paid for time "in-flight" - which is why you probably don't get paid for say, the TSA security checks. However, apparently there's a minimum base amount they're paid, even if they sit around doing nothing.
So we're not exactly comparing apples to apples here (that, and I suspect pilot salaries probably aren't exactly the same as retail employee salaries).
Last time I heard, airline attendants were the same (http://mentalfloss.com/article/31044/10-shocking-secrets-flight-attendants).
Cheers,
Victor
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> and I suspect pilot salaries probably aren't exactly
> the same as retail employee salaries
Not exactly, but closer than you might think. A look at the numbers: http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/ [wsj.com]
The upshot is that variability is high, but for junior pilots pay is between about $20k (for regional airlines) and $50k (highest starting pay at a major ariline). Average major airline starting pay is $36k. Of course pilots fresh out of school don
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No sympathy whatsoever.
As an airline pilot I do not get paid while I wait in line and am checked by the TSA. I do not get paid while I wait in line for customs. I do not get paid while I get the flight paperwork and verify it is safe and legal. I do not get paid while preparing and inspecting the airplane for flight. I do not get paid while I wait for everyone to get on the plane and coordinate with gate, ramp, fuel, maintenance and catering to ensure an on-time departure.
I though airline pilots were paid an annual salary, not an hourly rate...?
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Airline pilots are typically paid an hourly rate, but only for flight hours. It's pretty messed up.
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You're wrong on all counts. (Score:4, Interesting)
As an airline pilot, you've (well, your union, on your behalf) negotiated a contract with the airline where your pay is based on getting the plane where it needs to go, and you are paid for all activities necessary to accomplish the task for which you are paid for.
Also known as, AIRLINE PILOTS ARE NOT HOURLY EMPLOYEES.
I am sure that, once you add up all the time you spend on all of your job-related activities, your wage + time and a half for hours over 40 per week, greatly exceeds the minimum wage.
Just like every other salaried employee who doesn't make any more money when it's crunch time and you have to pull 10-12 hour days to get shit done. It's called a job description, and being paid for the job (get plane from A to B) instead of the time (you were in airports/planes from 9 AM to 8 PM.)
If you don't like the terms of your contract, either renegotiate it so you are paid by the hour instead of by the trip (or flight hour), or work somewhere else. I hear Apple stores are hiring.
Note that Apple stores probably don't have benefits like medical, dental, or free flights on any domestic carrier on a space-available basis, and your hourly wage will plummet vs. your flight-hour wage, but at least you'll get a slight increase on your paycheck if customs takes a little longer to clear!
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I was an hourly employee and I had to go through security before starting my shift. This was unpaid and there were often queues. It was the same for all the staff working airside who were paid by the hour.
Re:You're wrong on all counts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Former airport McDonalds worker here. Your post, and most of the posts replying to this guy amuse me a lot. I was an hourly employee and I had to go through security before starting my shift. This was unpaid and there were often queues. It was the same for all the staff working airside who were paid by the hour.
Yes, but those delays were imposed by the TSA and/or airport, not McDonalds or the other vendors. I'm sure you sometimes got stuck in traffic on the way to the airport too - again not a delay caused by your employer. These people are having to wait at the direction of Apple, their employer, so your example is not comparable.
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No sympathy whatsoever.
As an airline pilot I do not get paid while I wait in line and am checked by the TSA. I do not get paid while I wait in line for customs. I do not get paid while I get the flight paperwork and verify it is safe and legal. I do not get paid while preparing and inspecting the airplane for flight. I do not get paid while I wait for everyone to get on the plane and coordinate with gate, ramp, fuel, maintenance and catering to ensure an on-time departure.
Do you get paid by the hour?
If not these duties are part of your regular salary. Get a better union and negotiate
If so, get a better union and make sure you get paid for it.
I've got no sympathy for an employee who wont stand up for themselves. At least these retail staffers are willing to fight for fair pay and conditions.
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I bet that when you do get paid it's far more than minimum wage, which is compensation for your terrible inconvenience. Besides, your lack of sympathy for people with worse jobs than you makes you a selfish dick.
Re:I have no sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)
That is like saying "I'm a whiny gutless arse hole" because "I'm a whiny gutless arse hole" every one deserves to be like "whiny gutless arse holes". Sorry pal that's now how it works in a fair society. If an employer makes demands upon your time, you deserve to be fairly compensated for it.
I have sympathy for anyone who gets ripped off by their employer or in any way abused. It's pretty lame to be a cowardly victim and then thinks it fair for every one to get abused that way. Gee's dude I also hope they grope your genitals, radiate you arse and probe you upon a regular basis because it sounds like they should as for the rest of humanity any employer that treats it's employees like that deserves to be run out of business by vengeful unions.
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I believe that you are paid far more than the lowly Apple Store clerk, unless you are one of those pilots who work for one of those awful regional airlines. I find your lack of sympathy to be quite callous and arrogant. But I am hardly in a position to judge you.
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No sympathy whatsoever. As an airline pilot I do not get paid while I wait in line and am checked by the TSA. I do not get paid while I wait in line for customs. I do not get paid while I get the flight paperwork and verify it is safe and legal. I do not get paid while preparing and inspecting the airplane for flight. I do not get paid while I wait for everyone to get on the plane and coordinate with gate, ramp, fuel, maintenance and catering to ensure an on-time departure.
With all due respect, it's the flight industry that's got this backwards not the other way around. Is it your fault if the plane has a problem and you're grounded for half an hour extra? No, you're on the job, in your job uniform, ready to do your job but the risk is now transferred to you so now you're working half an hour "overtime" for free. That's not how it should be. I'm a strict believer in the "any time spent at work is work" principle, you should be able to clock in when you walk in the door (or pa
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Uh, airline piloting is a wee bit different than retail.
Salaried positions often give you more freedom and flexibility, a perk which is offset by additional occupational obligations. If you think you should be paid overtime for those additional requirements (and I'm not disagreeing with you), you or your union needs to negotiate a better contract.
Retail is generally a wage position: the job says $start-o'clock to $end-o'clock, those are your hours, anything more is overtime.
Oh, and you get to fly planes, n
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No sympathy huh? How sociopathic of you. Just because you have a shitty job, it doesn't justify bringing everyone else down to your level.
This is why the USA is so fucked up right now. Whenever someone else has a job with better pay and better working conditions, instead of demanding that your pay and working conditions improve, people with your mindset complain that the other guy is lazy, overpaid and undeserving of better treatment. Your attitude is part of the problem, not the solution.
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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 m
But it's not about the hardware (Score:3)
It's about that Apple "Experience"........
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Check bags after breaks??? (Score:2)
Surely if you're going to steal something, you'd do it on company time.
Not really that surprising (Score:2)
When I worked at Tandy Computers in the late 80's at their manufacturing facility as a motherboard repair technician, they had a similar system to check employees as they left the facility. However, I recall that the time clock was AFTER the checkpoint, so you were being paid while standing in the queue waiting to be checked. This could take 10-20 minutes each shift, depending on how quickly you got to the queue. Most of the workers were relatively low pay, hourly production line workers.
I do think the way
Best Buy in Los Angeles area (Score:3)
he who has less gold breaks the rules (Score:3)
Jan Wong [wikipedia.org]
There were many social issues discussed in this series of articles, the majority of which I didn't agree with as framed. One issue she pointed out was that these barely-literate low-income scullery-scrubs few of whom had driver's licences were expected to haul vacuum cleaners through the Toronto metro system between jobs that were not as proximal as a modern UPS delivery route.
Brown Down: UPS Drivers Vs. The UPS Algorithm [fastcompany.com]
No, the scheduling algorithm employed by the scullery-scrub dispatch office involved chewing up small bits of paper and spitting them at a map, because they were getting away with NOT PAYING for the delivery of vacuum cleaners by their downtrodden and raw-fingered cleaning staff. Many of these barely-solvent workers were putting in eight hour on job sites, plus another four hours (unpaid) moving between job sites, toting equipment that wasn't even their own for less than the cost of delivering the equipment by any other business method.
Jan Wong could have gone to war over a clear violation of labour fairness, but she instead decided to do a lot of public hang-wringing over systemic issues unlikely to ever change.
It's Apple's job to politely inform their store managers that this violates accepted labour practice and to put an end to it as thoroughly as they do with unwelcome rumours about unfinished products.
I once spoke to an ex IBM employee in the early 1980s who said he left IBM because he could get anything done. His department was under such tight security that it took him an hour to get to his desk in the morning and another hour to leave it in the afternoon. I think part of that was fetching his work product from a secure area and returning it there again with an inspection. He was well paid for the whole ordeal, until it finally drove him nuts.
The rule in a democratic salary market is that time is money. Even if the money is too small to spit at from the perspective of the person writing the cheques.
An anecdote I liked from that series was the incident(s) where business owners tried to bully her out of using street parking in front of their stores (which they would prefer to see used by customers) on the presumption that she was timid and uneducated. It almost blew her cover confessing she knew how to drive in the hiring interview. I think she had to tell some huge sob story to make her desperation believable to take such a job as a person who could hold down a driver's licence.
Boring (Score:3)
This is just a story about 2 stores, and my guess is that it's about paranoid managers who have lost stock in the past. No news here.
Amazing (Score:2)
It seems as though Apple has more security and protections on preventing stuff from being taken by employees than the NSA.
Meh nothing is going to change (Score:3)
Look at the YMCA personal trainers, ask them about their "mandatory" volunteering they do each week
.
"But isn't the YMCA a charity you ask?" Why yes and no. The YMCA that gives aid to the homeless and such sure but the gym portion is a whoooole different entity.
I knew an accountant who used to audit them and trust me they knew how to work the system and what was right and what was wrong.
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*Disclaimer* I may not be quoting directly/ correctly from memory
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Depending on where the Apple store is relative to your home/other jobs/schooling, employees might not relish the thought of going all the way to work and back every day with nothing but the contents of their pockets and wearing their work outfit.
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I don't think they should be searching or banning the bags, but it would've been easier from their standpoint to just ban them. Their policy exposes them to unneeded legal risk.
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I don't think they should be searching or banning the bags, but it would've been easier from their standpoint to just ban them. Their policy exposes them to unneeded legal risk.
the policy is so that the "managers" can feel like bigshots. it's not about easy. that's why they went along with it despite it being illegal.
Re:Why don't they just ban the bags? (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on where the Apple store is relative to your home/other jobs/schooling, employees might not relish the thought of going all the way to work and back every day with nothing but the contents of their pockets and wearing their work outfit.
They don't need to ban bringing the bag to work, just ban bringing it into the inventory control area. They could provide a locker room where people can lock up their bag before their shift, outside the inventory control point (the place where they were inspecting the bags). This is common practice at plenty of retailers, warehouses, and manufacturers. Try this: Go to Walmart and walk around. Okay, now how many employees do you see walking around the store with backpacks, purses etc? Answer: zero. They are in the locker room.
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Try this: Go to Walmart and walk around. Okay, now how many employees do you see walking around the store with backpacks, purses etc? Answer: zero. They are in the locker room.
Nice try. The Wal-Mart employees generally have to walk through the entire store to the back to clock in. The area where the receiving docks are is where the break room and employee lockers are. Yes, they keep their purses/backpacks/lunchboxes in a locker while working, but they could also slip things into these bags in the store while on their way back, or take merchandise from the storage racks in back area by the receiving docks, then walk out at the end of the day with their bags on arm.
For your idea to
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Why don't they just ban the bags from the stores in the first place?
Because 90% of women carry purses. Most women's clothing don't have usable pockets, so they need the purses. A ban would unfairly affect women more than men, and would result in another lawsuit.
Also, if the store has any kind of dress code or uniforms, there's a good chance that many of the employees bring a change of clothes with them so they don't have to go straight home after work to change (and, to a lesser degree, go straight to work from home in the morning). Bringing your change of clothes in a bag
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I don't even see how such a thing is legal..
i think the whole point is that it is not legal
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afte
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You can't put cameras under peoples shirts. Well you could but you'd get in even bigger trouble.
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Re:Apple is just an Electronics Company (Score:4, Insightful)
Shut up you ignorant lying moron.
sales are plummeting
It's seen a _small_ sales dip in _some_ categories but nothing close to "plummeting". And if you dare quote the iPad numbers, you will betray how daft you are. It's a channel adjustment - the actual sell through numbers only dropped 3% which is _EASILY_ attributable to people knowing a new iPad is on the horizon and choosing to wait before buying and if you consider a 3% dip "plummeting" then you are a moron.
paying literally zero tax
Apple paid more corporate taxes than ANY OTHER AMERICAN COMPANY! Now, I don't know what your definition of "literally zero" is but when they paid more than anyone else, that would suggest they did not, in fact, pay "literally zero". Unless every other corporation got money back, Apple did not LITERALLY pay ZERO taxes.
I'm not going to pick apart any more of your post because you're a lying moron and not worth my time. Anyone who claims Apple is paying "literally zero tax" is flat out a liar.
How does ignorant lying bullshit like this get modded up?
Feel free to flame; feel free to mod me troll, but I'm sick of flat out bullshit ignorant posts like this being modded "Informative". I've been coming to Slashdot for many years to learn new things about tech and geek subjects but this is getting pathetic. Hate Apple, if you want, but at least base it vaguely on facts rather than complete and total bullshit lies.
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1) How much money did Apple fork over to the US government in taxes? I'm guessing that number is not-zero.
So the claim that Apple paid literally zero in taxes is a lie. They paid LITERALLY billions of dollars in taxes. Last I checked, "billions" does not equal "literally zero". They, in fact, paid MORE than any other American company.
2) What other companies make use of the Ireland tax situation? But let's focus on Apple, right? Apple generates page views and nobody cares about every other company that's doi
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Up to 30 minutes, actually, and it is unpaid time - despite them actually working.
Was that too difficult to understand?