Apple Loses In Court, Owes $2 Million For Not Giving Workers Meal Breaks (cnn.com) 255
An anonymous reader writes:
Apple has been ordered to cut a $2 million check for denying some of its retail workers meal breaks. The lawsuit was first filed in 2011 by four Apple employees in San Diego. They alleged that the company failed to give them meal and rest breaks [as required by California law], and didn't pay them in a timely manner, among other complaints. In 2013, the case became a class action lawsuit that included California employees who had worked at Apple between 2007 and 2012, approximately 21,000 people...
The complaint says Apple's culture of secrecy keeps employees from talking about the company's poor working conditions. "If [employees] so much as discuss the various labor policies, they run the risk of being fired, sued or disciplined."
Apple changed their break policy in 2012, according to CNN, which reports that the second half of the case should conclude later this week. The employees that had been affected by Apple's original break policy could get as much as $95 each from Friday's settlement, according to CNN, "but it's likely some of the money will go toward attorney fees."
The complaint says Apple's culture of secrecy keeps employees from talking about the company's poor working conditions. "If [employees] so much as discuss the various labor policies, they run the risk of being fired, sued or disciplined."
Apple changed their break policy in 2012, according to CNN, which reports that the second half of the case should conclude later this week. The employees that had been affected by Apple's original break policy could get as much as $95 each from Friday's settlement, according to CNN, "but it's likely some of the money will go toward attorney fees."
two MILLION dollars.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Let's see: with their market cap at about 620 BILLION dollars, 2 million is: a pinch of shit.
True. 2 million out of 620 billion doesn't even amount a rounding error. Even 100 million would barely be noticeable.
Re: (Score:2)
Office theft is more than a few pens and some papers, we're talking about laptops, desktops, wireless access points, switches and other hardware that goes missing, especially portable peripherals or spare parts that 'get lost'.
Could be worse... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Could be worse... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Remember, duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it binds the universe together.
And a $5.95 shipping charge for a "free" item.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, run down to your local Walmart and pick it up.
None of the local Wal-Marts are in running distance from where I live.
Sometimes you get to see some amazing things...
White trailer trash? I don't need to see my distant relatives that badly.
For those unfamiliar with California law (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some miscellaneous aspects of it covering consecutive hours worked to make allowances for split shifts, but that's the jist of it.
A lot of people seem to think employers are out to squeeze every drop of life they can from their employees at the lowest wage possible. That might be true for some big companies or awful employers, but the vast majority of us (mostly small businesses) care about our employees. Having small details like break times laid down in law makes our lives easier too, since we don't have to stumble around in a legal grey area guessing what's acceptable and what's not. (That's the situation with illegal immigrants as workers. We're not supposed to hire illegal immigrants, but the government doesn't give us any tools to determine if someone is an illegal immigrant so that we can not-hire them. According to my lawyer, having acceptable copies of government-issued ID [wikipedia.org] on file is enough. Except sometimes we get IDs which are fake, or worse, which might or might not be fake. You can get in trouble for hiring someone whose ID is obviously fake, and you can get in trouble for not-hiring someone whose ID is real. Which leaves you in a pickle when faced with an applicant whose ID looks like could be fake but you're not really sure.)
Re: (Score:2)
I-9 is the one requirement that liberal small business people love to bitch about. Among the several forms and many regulations they have to cope with this is the one, singular requirement where they have no difficulty imagining a parade of regulatory horribles. It's a pencil whipping operation; actually prosecuting an employer that isn't blatantly violating immigration law is next to impossible since "knowingly" is the standard, but they still whine and moan. Even when their lawyers tell them how little
Re: (Score:2)
In Oregon we do it: 30 minutes unpaid, or 20 minutes paid. And in retail they can require you to take your break while you work, if you're allowed to eat on the job. If you're not allowed to whip out a burrito and munch down, then you have to get a real break without duties. Other industries have similar rules, if it is considered to be the standard practice in that industry.
Re: (Score:2)
You can get sued if you consistently verify ID's of only particular groups of people.
You either have to have a policy in place and verify everyone that applies for a job (and carry the associated $150/query costs) or get sued for discrimination even if those persons were found out to be illegal. Even if you do verify everyone but you don't have a written policy around it or don't keep track of the results, you can end up being sued.
And even if they end up losing the suit, you're out thousands of dollars bec
FTFY... (Score:2)
The employees that had been affected by Apple's original break policy could get as much as $20 each from Friday's settlement, according to reality, "but it's likely most of the money will go toward attorney fees."
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
So? People are always free to hire their own lawyers, at their own risk and on their own dime, to file their own lawsuit. As opposed to having to do nothing whatsoever to gain some compensation from the company that wronged you, while punishing the guilty party.
The alternatives are:
1) Consum
How much!?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
How on earth can it be so little? Let's say you worked there 5 days a week for one year, and you were denied a 30 minute lunch break on every shift. That would be around 130 hours of your time... or $1300 per employee per year... how does that become $95? If the practices were in place for 5 years, that could be $7500 for a full time worker who was there the whole time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's more like "shit happened and I missed my lunch break 3 times in 2016".
Re: (Score:2)
Is the lunch break required to be a paid break?
Re:How much!?!? (Score:4, Informative)
the way it works on a mandated meal break is it is not paid
BUT you are required by law to not work during same
another fun factiod if you are required to be there and waiting for work YOU MUST BE PAID so if the power goes out and or the computers crash you must be paid until you are formally told to go home (so if it takes 3 hours for the manager to call a shutdown you get paid for that time)
Re: (Score:2)
the computers crash you must be paid until you are formally told to go home (so if it takes 3 hours for the manager to call a shutdown you get paid for that time)
In a past life when I supported software at distribution centers I'd sometimes get a call with some guy screaming at me that he's got a warehouse full of union workers sitting around being paid to do nothing because the system was down.
I had one guy tell me to call him every 10 minutes with a status update. This was in the days of pagers and dial-up modems. I just rolled my eyes and told him I would. How was I going to diagnose and fix his problem if I'm calling him every 10 minutes? Fortunately for me
Re: (Score:2)
The difference in his tone of voice between the first time I called him and the 2nd time when I told him it was fixed was quite remarkable.
When I was working IT help desk at a Fortune 500 company, a woman screamed in my ear for ten minutes about how no one could fix her problem with the IE6 intranet sites being broken every month. I quietly remoted into her workstation, rolled back the monthly auto-update for Adobe Flash, and told her that it was fixed after she stopped screaming. She was so astonished that she no longer had a problem that she called everyone in management to praise me.
Re: (Score:3)
Because the lawyers decided that it wasn't worth their time to negotiate for more. The injured parties (the employees) did not factor into the decision.
Re: (Score:2)
Any affected party can separate from the class action and sue separately, if they feel it is unfair.
But really, lots of employees worked without breaks for years, and didn't take it to someone to enforce. They were part of the problem. They worried about losing their jobs, and didn't take action, letting it happen to themselves and others.
Is it fair to give everyone who was an accomplice, their actual dollar amount as calculated? The only real victim is the representative who participated on behalf of the c
Re: (Score:2)
Except any employer with hourly employees tracks their time. To be able to pay these employees, they have to know when they started and stopped work. So Apple should be able to look at those logs and see who worked 8 hours without a lunch break. Simply force them to turn over the logs and then the court can work it out.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I would be surprised if they didn't have the time officially listed as an unpaid break. If that is the case, they should also get paid for the time they worked.
Re: (Score:2)
it has nothing to do with the employees, it has everything to do with the used car salesman / part time lawyer that talked them into such a pointless thing as a class action lawsuit
How DARE they (Score:5, Funny)
The nerve of those workers wanting to eat meals!
What will they demand next, bathroom breaks? Clean air? Properly grounded equipment?
Please, Mein Fuhrer Trump, put an end to this anti-capitialist craziness!
Re: (Score:2)
What will they demand next, bathroom breaks?
I don't know how true this is, but that has been alleged:
No relief for poultry workers [oxfamamerica.org]
Oxfam interviewed dozens of Tyson workers across six states, almost all of whom reported being denied bathroom breaks outright or having to wait an unreasonably long time to use the bathroom—up to an hour or more. Hanson, a worker at a Tyson plant in Arkansas, had the uncomfortable experience of seeing his own mother urinate on the line; she now wears diapers to work to avoid it happening again. Tyson workers also report being fined if they are late returning from the bathroom. Jean, a worker from a Tyson Foods plant in Virginia, says, “You go to the bathroom one minute late, they have you disciplined. The supervisor will have you sign a discipline paper I don’t drink any water so I won’t have to go.”
Re: (Score:2)
"You go to the bathroom one minute late, they have you disciplined. The supervisor will have you sign a discipline paper I don't drink any water so I won't have to go."
It's a testament to these worker's self-control that the supervisors don't mysteriously disappear never to be seen again, get knifed in the plant with no witnesses to the crime, or end up falling into the processing vats "by accident". A few such incidents would probably make a world of difference in the working conditions.
I am, of course, in no way advocating for such things, just making an observation.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
And those lucky ones who had a meal break... (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of something (Score:2)
-Alice, Unforgiven
Re: Courage (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Meal breaks (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Meal breaks (Score:5, Interesting)
As they should, because they have the largest population [wikipedia.org] of any state in the US. About 1 of 8 people in the US live in California.
A more interesting statistic would be Gross State Product GSP per capita [wikipedia.org] in each state. In 2012, California's GSP ranked 17 among all states and in 2015 it still only ranked 10. In 2015, California's GSP per capita was only about 11% higher than the US GDP per capita.
Income in California is also very much distributed at the upper end -- from 2012 through 2014, 48% [sacbee.com] of the state income tax was paid by the top 1% of taxpayers.
As well, according to the Department of Labor [bls.gov], in November 2016 California had relatively high unemployment compared to other states -- 38 states had lower unemployment rates.
Overall, California's economy isn't particularly impressive.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Overall, California's economy isn't particularly impressive.
Except for, you know, being the 6th largest economy in the entire world, with it taking the rest of the entire US combined to be larger...
Re: (Score:3)
OK, even on Slashdot you need to read the post you're replying to!
"A lot of people live in California" is a different thing to claim than "California does well by the average guy". Do you get that?
Re:Meal breaks (Score:4, Insightful)
California is so huge you have to look at it piecewise, otherwise you're doing apples-and-oranges comparisons.
For example the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland CSA is an economic behemoth that is likely the richest region of that size in the world. Yes, Qatar, Macau, Luxemburg and Lichtenstein would beat it for per capita GDP, but compared to the Bay Area those places have tiny populations.
Does it make sense to average a place like that with San Joaquin County, which has the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line in California? That's entirely a function of the industry that dominates the county: agriculture. Over 20% of the workers are immigrants, 3/4 of them fairly recent.
So it's like a card game in which California was dealt 58 very different cards. What you have to do is compare different CSAs to comparable CSAs elsewhere in the county. If you want to start a tech business, you aren't very likely going to start it in Riverside, but that'd be a good place to start a trucking business. The same applies to states; sometime social dysfunction is useful. Arkansas and West Virginia have the lowest educational attainment in the US, which makes them a great place to start a low-wage business. Massachusetts and Maryland have the highest educational attainment in the US, which makes it a great place to start, say, a biotech firm. California has counties that resemble either end of the spectrum.
Re: (Score:2)
California has plenty of issues as you say, but is hardly a "failed state" like Kansas.
Re: (Score:2)
Unemployment rates are widely accepted as part of the measure of the strength of an economy. Of course, no single factor can generally be viewed in isolation.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, you should learn how to use computers and read -- there's a link you can click on. I know HTML may be hard for mentally challenged individuals, but links are these things that are often underlined and, on /., followed by a hostname in clear text.
Again, you should learn how to read. I included several factors in my comment -- unemployment was just one of them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope not. Dictators are bad. Freedom is good.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
So Trump has a tater on his dick.
Now I get the tiny hands humour.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't tell me. Tell the guy I was responding to. He's the one who argues "laws" like laws are sacred and the politicians who write them should be worshipped.
Re: (Score:3)
Then let me give you a very good rule of thumb.
If the "person" is actually a BUSINESS -then ALL laws ARE sacrosanct and MUST be obeyed without question.
If it's an actual PERSON - then some laws may be wrong and may on occasion deserve to broken. A good example of a law that SHOULD be broken is a law that unjustly denies some people a right that others have. Like making Rosa Parks move to the back of the bus - it was right of her to break that law.
The reason this rule of thumb is so uncannilly good at tellin
Re: (Score:2)
Every little thing Apple does destroys the little equity they have left. They are now rich, but they are riding on Jobs vision stripping what's left of his ideals (with all his pros and cons, he was quite remarkable).
You mean things like being sued for stuff that happened while Jobs was still alive and stopped when he was dead? The sanctification of Steve Jobs by Apple Haters is becoming ridiculous.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Expecting humans to work 8-12hr shifts without meal/bathroom breaks is pretty harsh and also counterproductive to business.. That's how accidents happen and they cost more than the meal breaks do.
Honestly, I'm surprised that apple got away with this. I believe every state has such laws.
"invoke fear into the class members that if they so much as discuss the various labor policies, they run the risk of being fired, sued or disciplined."
Use of the phrase 'class member' is interesting as no typical employee would use such phrases. It sounds more like these people were told what to say. TFS only attributes it to 'store employees', but it reads like propaganda.
Re:Meal breaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why employers would have meal breaks for employees even without these rights and the lawyerly looting they enable.
Employers like Apple?
Re: (Score:2)
More likely they were about "working lunches" where a meeting or such is scheduled for lunch time and employees are expected to eat while working.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. These lawsuits are about maybe one or two "people" missing part of their lunch (or getting lunch a little late) probably just the once
.
I just wondered to myself if I could minimise it even more than your (really quite ridiculously) biased language. Turns out I could - just a tad.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No one "took away" anyone's meal breaks.
Re:Took away (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.mercurynews.com/201... [mercurynews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. It says lunches were late. And some complaining about scheduling difficulties. And some guys got a final paycheck a little late. Not exactly earth shattering.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel bad for you if you think getting exactly the right number of minutes for lunch at exactly the right time is what life is about.
Re: Took away (Score:2)
Why can't they oay on time? Also judge ruled something tiny just as a way to say "pay attention" and patting it in the back.
No Meal break... (Score:2)
... is a significant part of the reason why the rest of the US (and other country such as China) are overworked, overstressed, in bad general health and overweight.
(Most Europe also has meal brake. That doesn't only include our giant bankrupcy generator (Greece), but also countries like Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia...)
Re:No Meal break... (Score:4, Funny)
(Most Europe also has meal brake.
They aren't very effective though. Bonded composites like those used in the USA make better brake pads.
It might explain the prevalence of small scooters in European cities. They don't require much braking force to stop.
Keyboard finger jumble (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, sorry, I mistyped "beark"...
huh... "breka"....
no... "braek"...
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, sorry, I mistyped "beark"...
huh... "breka"....
no... "braek"...
Calm down, take a beak and then you will be able to spell berke properly
LOL (Score:2)
That was funny : I'm laughing so loud, I'm going to berk a rib.
Re: (Score:2)
If they get no meal break, how are they overweight?
They bring their own snack food or hit the vending machine. Or they gorge themselves before or after work.
Also saying that something is a "significant" part of a problem without providing a shred of evidence to support it makes you look stupid.
This is Slashdot. You must be new around here.
Junk food AND snacking (Score:2)
They bring their own snack food or hit the vending machine. Or they gorge themselves before or after work.
In addition to the junk food (snacks and industrial), there is direct effect due to the *fast eating* (insuline peak, blablabla....) disruption of daily rythm...
which can also contribute to the increased chronic stress (increased corticosteroids, etc.) which also has a bad long term effect on health.
TL;DR: the junk food itself isn't the only cause of obesity, the overstress is also a major one.
Re: (Score:2)
Having consistent meal times is a huge factor in weight gain/loss.
Re: (Score:3)
California does give a damn about its working population. The asymmetrical negotiating advantage of employers needs to be balanced with statutes protecting the worker class from large multinational corporations. Sorry, the free market doesn't work well when the balance of power is so heavily tilted towards these large players. I do agree that small businesses should be subject to less regulation than the large multinationals though.
Re:Meal breaks (Score:5, Interesting)
"I do agree that small businesses should be subject to less regulation than the large multinationals though."
No, they shouldn't. As a small business owner myself, I have no problems with California regulations and I do give my employees lunch and breaks if they want too (Hell, some of them I have work from home now). The fact is, a lot of the big companies will follow most of California regulations to the letter because they don't have time to deal with all the liability if they don't. It's actually the damn small businesses that abuse the hell out of employees and don't follow the rules. As for costs, it's minuscule to follow for me because I actually know how to plan things for the long term and actually have procedures.
So, a good example of a small business is the building down from me, a paper converter. They don't follow any regulations, hire illegals to run their machines, abuse the hell out of their workers by overworking them over 12 hours a day (How do I know? They all come to my building looking for work telling me about this). So whenever I go to lunch with the owner, he bitches and moans about California laws everyday because he wants to pay his workers even less than minimum wage. Complains he has to pay overtime for his employees because he doesn't want to hire more people to deal with the overflow. Then he bitches and moans to me how he can't find any maintenance guy worth anything because he wants to pay them minimum wage and the guys he interviews laugh at him (Wants an engineer to work minimum wage or close to it). The guy has no permits, but plays the game with the city and OSHA like a flute. That is the small business you are talking about that you want to subject to less regulations. And this is actually very typical of every small business in California. Stop thinking that mom & pop shop is ethical, because this guy is a mom & pop shop, they're actually the worse.
And this isn't the only guy, I have a logistics company up the street from me doing the same thing, a screen printing business doing the same thing, and a company making spices doing the same thing.
And somehow I have no problem dealing with the regulations, but everyone else does! In my opinion, small businesses need to be subject to more regulations and scrutiny because they get away with so much, you wouldn't believe. If it was so bad in California, they would have moved out long ago.
Re: (Score:3)
Overall I have been screwed over FAR more commonly from a small business than a large one. What I have found is that large businesses don't screw you over on small contracts since it is not worth the time to do it. It gets them more negative press and for no reason at all. I have also found that small businesses tend to be the most abusive and deceptive in what they want to do.
I once had a contract to build an electronic voting system for a professional ethics body and they wanted the ability to tamper with
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say there should be no regulation or enforcement of labor laws for small businesses, and existing California labor law, I beleive is not to onerous given there are even more employee-friendly laws in most other advanced democracies.
Larger corps screw the workers in more indirect methods which present less liability to them. Fissured workplaces (contingent/temporary workers with no benefits), using H-1B body shops, buying off legislators for favorable laws, and using the courts to overturn what vote
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like your business neighbor does not deserve the privileges of having either customers or employees. Only thing deserved for him should be bankruptcy.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a big part of the reason why California is the worst state in the US to do business.
Heads up: Don't be surprised if you get visited by a few ghosts over the next couple of nights.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot to add:
"Humbug!"
Re: (Score:2)
so, no other state in the union has mandatory lunch breaks along with other breaks for hourly workers?
cause im pretty sure all of them do, course im pretty sure you are a moron as well
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Without lawyers extorting money from the landlord? How is that possible?
Re: (Score:2)
Mostly because of the church! That's the key to understanding the middle ages: the church restrained the worst excesses of the aristocracy, and the aristocracy restrained the worst excesses of the church. When either became ascendant, things went to shit.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually that's not quite as true as you think.
For example - adjusted for inflation and cost-of-living changes, what the average 14th century English peasant earned in a year, would be equivalent to earning 20 thousand pounds a year today - that's a VERY comfortable salary.
The great poverty ever experienced in England happened during industrial revolution. Child mortality before 10 went up from about 50% in the 18th century to over 90% with starvation and worked-to-death being prime factors in the increase
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Meal breaks (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what's on the books, does Washington ENFORCE meal breaks? Apparently California didn't, thus this lawsuit and somewhere a middle manager who made a nice bonus for several years for forward thinking.
It's like, every Wal-Mart employee knows they have paid time off. It's in their paperwork, it's the law in most areas. Yet they also "know" that if they take a minute of it they'll be told their services are no longer needed. They also better show up for those 4 hour "management meetings" off the clock where they do a suspicious amount of shelf stocking.
Re: (Score:2)
In Oregon we have balanced rules that protect both sides, and the actual problem on the job with mean breaks is that employers will force you to take them.
When the rules are super-clear and well-enforced and can be changed by direct public vote, then there ends more obstinate workaholics than employers who don't give breaks.
Since employers and employees have different worst case scenarios, you can protect both at the same time without any conflict. Don't believe the cynics.
Re: (Score:2)
Break and meal rules are quite clear for non-exempt employees. What is much more grey is who really is exempt. The California Labor Commission takes the approach that everyone really should be non-exempt, unless they clearly fit in the exempted categories without any potential conflict.
I am an engineer (PE). We hire engineers with zero to 30+ years of experience, all with degrees, most with their EIT, and some with their PE. It is strange
Re: (Score:3)
If you believe fictional stories about us, yes. Also we spend our nights huddled in our homes hiding from vampires.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have my dentures in.
Re: (Score:2)
>No wonder you are being replaced by more "efficient" robots.
Obviously your perk-blessed workers will evaporate even faster, as your corporates decide to take the plunge and buy
Re: (Score:2)
But people who really need an doctor may just brake in a take the apple stuff it's win win you can get away with it and flip the apple stuff or go to jail / prison where the state must give you an doctor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Or we could just use currency to compensate people for their time and get currency for giving our time to others...
Re: O wow (Score:3, Insightful)
I know. Assuming they made $10/hr, thats a mere 19 days of 30 minute lunch breaks. Unless 19 days was the longest anyone could ever stand to work in one of those stores, thats a ridiculously low compensation
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the lunch breaks were paid lunches (which I kind of doubt because that is atypical in retail) then how would you figure that?
Personally, when I worked retail I didn't like lunch breaks specifically because they were unpaid. I would have rather just had a shorter shift. Though more importantly, retail jobs suck, and I swear to god I'll never work another retail job again, even if it paid really well. I worked at Staples, and constantly shifting between moving freight and helping customers was frustrat
Re: (Score:3)
I can't imagine how much it must suck working for Apple with the type of rude assfuck customers they get there.
If I worked at an apple store I would tell people the most retarded shit about the phones to see what they believed. "Oh yeah they have a microwave receptor converter so if you ever lose your charger you can stick it in the microwave for 30 seconds for a full charge" etc..... I probably wouldn't work there long
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: O wow (Score:3)
The Swiss already do this for speeding tickets - a millionaire was fined £180,000.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/eur... [bbc.co.uk]
Re: O wow (Score:4, Interesting)
The Swiss tend to be quite impressive. Their FOIA system is just mindblowing. Walk into any government office, fill in a request, and if they don't give you the document you demanded within an hour somebody WILL get fired. No cumbersome multi-month turn-arounds, not court appeals to be allowed to keep it secret.
Anything less than national security top-secret classification and if they don't give you the paperwork within the hour - they are breaking the law. Now that makes corruption almost non-existent, it makes government oversight easy and immediate and powerful.
Re: (Score:3)
It works like that in Switzerland because they are a very small, homogenous society. They also share social and cultural values consistent among the populace. They basically agree on a standard for expectations. Try to actualize such a rule in the US and you will see how it falls apart. We're a far to vast, divergent and disagreeable society to ever achieve this level of pristine regeneration.
LOL. No. It's not because you have such a wonderfully 'diverse' society.
It's because your goverment is corrupt, the ruling elite have clubbed together and successfully locked out everyone else.
The foxes are running your henhouse and have for a long time.
Switzerland has a real democracy. You don't. End of story.
Re: (Score:3)
Your manager's a cock and breaking the law, in almost any first-world country (and the US).
You sit down for a break, stick to your allowed time, wait for them to complain. If they sack you (a distinct possibility), you can take them to court quite easily.
The problem is that people are SO scared of losing their job that they won't ever question it, as it sounds like you haven't, and they get away with it.
What gets me more is "One of the largest companies in the world thinks that they can't afford to give yo