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Apple Sued For Turning Workers Into Slaves
SwiftyNifty writes "Apple employees are putting together a class action lawsuit for not receiving overtime pay. A Lawsuit filed Monday in California seeks class action status alleging that Apple denied technical staffers required overtime pay and meal compensation in violation of state law.
Filed in the US District Court for Southern California, the complaint claims that many Apple employees are routinely subjected to working conditions resembling indentured servitude, or 'modern day slaves,' for lack of better words."
cultists don't get payed
If you think YOU'RE a slave, try working in a iPod factory in China for a while. And be glad Apple at least hasn't outsourced you....yet.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
For the experience!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
You know for all the flak we give the traditional media, at least they don't have headlines like this.
Not properly dispensing overtime pay is not the same thing as slavery, and the disconnect between the inflammatory headline and TFA is appalling.
On a lighter note, the CAPTCHA for me is unionize.
The real litigious bastards...
Maybe these people need to talk with someone who has actually been enslaved before they claim they were treated the same way. They should be compensated appropriately for their time, but the shock value of using the term "slave" is pretty ridiculous.
Whale
Christ.. This quickly??!.. Server not available.
It's their Jobs.
Nobody hunted him down and made him return to the job; he's not a slave, QED.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm being repressed!
'Slavery' seems like far too extreme of a word the 'indentured servitude' is slightly less inaccurate. And concerning 'servitude' the 13th amendment only prohibits "involuntary servitude". These people can quit if they would like.
I've already seen a "joke" about cultists (it was crap, I'm expecting better), any more?
But yeah, a random comment, capitalism sucks.
Seriously, people often don't have a real choice (the freedom to starve...) when it comes to signing contracts, especially in countries (such as the USA) where significant workers rights aren't enshrined in law.
In this case, it appears that the workers signed contracts which said that they wouldn't get paid an hourly rate, which means that they don't get overtime. Which means (at least in this case), that they can get over worked for nothing.
And that is a problem (I've heard it is a very big problem in Japan generally).
Basically (and I'm taking off my anarchist hat for a minute), workers rights do require regulation in a capitalist economy, otherwise they get screwed.
I wank in the shower.
Probably means they worked a regular 40-hour/week schedule. Of course, were they actually WORKING?
Sorry, but the jab at the "left coast" was a little too easy here. It IS Taxifornia, after all...
Indentured Servitude: An indentured servant is a form of debt bondage worker, in which the indentured individual is intentionally, unethically and illegally deprived of their human rights, their civil rights and their personal freedom and liberty.
Unfortunately TFA is Slashdotted right now so I can't read all of the details, but if the summary is anything to go by, I really, really doubt Apple was forcing these guys to work due to debt and/or was holding them captive. What they did do was make their workers work OT without paying them correctly, which is an inexcusably naughty practice, but it's hardly indentured servitude, slavery, or any other form of bondage.
Furthermore this shit is fairly common, Apple isn't the first company or the last company to stiff their employees on OT. That doesn't make it right and certainly knocks Apple down a few pegs in my own eyes, but get some perspective here people.
Huh? Working conditions aside, how does this in any way resemble slavery or indentured servitude? If your job is that bad, or you feel like you're being screwed over, find another one. By all means give your employer a bloody nose (financially speaking) while you're at it.
Slaves had no choices, Apple's employees do. To compare the two situations is mildy disgusting.
I find it interesting that in this and on other forums discussing this case people are so quick to blame the workers for getting screwed out of overtime.
IMHO, a thorough investigation needs to happen. If Apple did anything wrong they need to be held accountable. If they didn't that should come out too.
"Lead plaintiff David Walsh was employed by Apple as a network engineer from 1995 until 2007. His complaint says he was often required to work more than 40 hours per week, miss meals, and spend his evenings and even entire weekends on call without any overtime pay or meal compensation. He fielded technical support calls that often came after 11 pm."
Sounds like a typical work week for me. I don't get overtime pay or meal compensation either. And I don't get a free iPod or iPhone as a Christmas gift.
...ends in .aspx
iWimps!
She and her colleagues have "X" number of contract days for which they must report to work.
However of late, the practice has begun of additional "nonmandatory" meetings, training sessions, and general workdays. You know, "for the children." This has grown to the point where she is probably present "at work" during about 12 to 15 days of her summer vacation. None of this time is compensated in any way; in fact, with gasoline costs as they are, you may readily say SHE is paying for this privilege.
Oh, it's "not mandatory," but it is "expected" by the administrators, who like to boast to their peers about the amount of "donated time" they're getting out of their teachers. "Failure to cooperate" can lead to subtle retaliation.
My point is that this isn't "slavery" but it is d*mned inconsiderate. If you want to climb the "ladder of success," don't do it on the backs of your "underlings."
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Good god it appears to be the phrase of the year "We are just modern slaves". Top of the shop of abuse of the term is Sepp "I'm a nutter" Blatter who in reference to someone who is paid about $300,000 A WEEK said that it was just like modern slavery.
These people aren't slaves because.... THEY COULD QUIT. It might be tough, it might be hard, but either quit and get another job or work out a constructive way of fixing it.
Don't compare it to the physical ownership of another human being and the sort of destruction of human rights that entails.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Apple employees should just switch which pins are connected via the jumper. It's clearly labeled on the top of the drive.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Last I heard, slaves didn't get paid.
:-[
And were kept on the grounds at all times...
And were usually fed to stop them from dying...
And were usually used for sex or manual labour...
40 Hours is slavery? I do 56 hours a week for probably less money than they do. I don't complain about my human rights being deprived
Knows everything about nothing and nothing about everything.
Apple made it perfectly clear in their contracts that they would be compensated by merely getting excited about the thought of working near the place where such secret and beautiful products are created. Even just working for Apple should be compensation enough. Hell, you should be able to get your date off merely by telling her you work for Apple.
I take it these people didn't get the memo. Do these people not know that?
It's called working. If you are a salaried worker, you are exempt from overtime. Being salaried has nothing to do with being classified as management. I am a non-management employee and receive a salary.
The up-side of being salaried is that I am not tied to a time clock. Some weeks I work less than 40 hours, some weeks I work more. I keep track of what I work and take time off as needed to compensate for extra hours.
No one is forcing these people to continue their employment at Apple. I'm not sure this story is really worth discussing.
How else is Apple going to keep their prices so low and affordable? (/sarcasm for the denser ones)
It Just Works.(TM)
Slaves aren't paid at all, they can't be fired either...they either sold or killed.
Is the RDF incapable of maintaining employee satisfaction?
too early for the +5 'insightful's and 'interesting's. Maybe I should just stick around till 10 when all the regular slashdotters have settled in at their workplaces
The real question is whether he was paid a salary or an hourly wage. It's not only management employees (as TFA claims) that are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Pretty much all white collar salaried jobs are. In which case, no overtime for you!
I don't work in IT so I'm basing this off "Office Space", but isn't unpaid overtime a given in IT? I'm always hearing horror stories of programmers working 100+ hours a week to meet a deadline. Not that this being commonplace this makes it o.k.
It looks like the link has been slashdotted already. I am getting a "Service Unavailable" error.
Apple employees should just suck it up and take it. You don't like it, go somewhere else to work. Apple I am sure is strongly considering moving the company to parts Europe so they don't have to deal with the likes of these over-paid labor sensitive people here in the US.
Not to mention, because it's getting too hard to lower wages and earnings, labor costs are cheaper in Europe and Mexico. So you know this is definitely on the table.
Congress I'm sure is still giving them their blessing to send those jobs to China, India, Mexico and where ever the want. There are still plenty of people in the US that will buy these foreign products without issue.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Equating earning $100k and working in an air conditioned office longer than you expected with SLAVERY disparages the memories of those who were whipped to near death while working in fields, and paid nothing.
I think the court should order those workers to work on plantations without pay for a while, then reconsider their use of the word "slavery."
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
"Coke Cola introduced a new, delicious Lime-twisted beverage today, creating a Holocaust of flavor formerly unknown to this world until today. The lines of people at convenience stores remind one of cattle awaiting an unknown fate, only these cattle were people, and the fate a tasty, carbonated beverage."
I would like to read the article.
...and not loving it.
...that's how they keep their prices low...err, wait...
Geeze! They just didn't pay overtime wages. Slaves would be making them work after they were off the time clock. I wasn't paid overtime for my 43 hours of weekly service once. You know what I did? I went to my HR lady and told her what happened. Two weeks later there was a mysterious 32.50$ in my paycheck.
Per Wikipedia: Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation (such as wages) in return for their labor. As such, slavery is one form of unfree labor. Uh, so how are they being held against their will? They have to work? No compensation?
IBM essentially lost a class action over wages as well (it was slashdotted). the result? everyone took a 15% paycut after their substantial backpay.
considering you will be backtaxed as well for those unpaid wages, is it still worth it?
Good people go to bed earlier.
http://www.bigshinything.com/wp-photos/1243364169.jpeg
Just wait until they win their suit..Apple will pay the court required payments.. then convert all those employee to an hourly status...at a base pay cut design to make it so that all the overtime is required to make it back to what they were getting in salary in the first place.
For the IBM employeesu in California that sued for the same thing.. the class won $56M and everyone in the class was reclassified as hourly at a 15% pay cut, because based on IBM's calculations that would keep the wage payments at the same level after the switch from salary to hourly. And oh by the way.. IBM applied the reclassification across all American employees in the same job category, but not the class action payments.
I haven't had guaranteed overtime pay at any salaried technical job, ever. And I'm pushing 50. The only time I've gotten overtime is on contract, or during deadline crunch and even there it's something the company does because they don't expect to meet a deadline otherwise. On the other hand, I've only once been officially asked to work more than 40 hours without overtime... and the company was working out of bankruptcy at the time.
I remember when slashdot was full of smart people with a liberal philosophy
I don't remember that. I remember a slashdot full of nerds... all the way down.
... where, unless you are upper management, you are getting the shaft. Being a developer, I particularly like how (at my company anyway) our sales staff pulls down Director level salary and obscene commissions on the gross (NOT net) product they push out the door ... even when it means a loss for the company.
I remember back years ago where there were a few movements to form programmers unions ... doomed to failure from the inception. Programmers don't need huge entrenched installations to do our work like, say, UAW workers do ... and since every cocky high school kid who has churned out "Hello World" in Visual Basic thinks they can do real development ... and the typical management position that developers are an easily replaced commodity.
I dunno. I'm just old and jaded. Always do the best work you are capable of doing, and if you feel you deserve better compensation when your company is either unwilling (don't see you as a valuable asset) or unable (poor decisions have left them so fubar that they can't) then it is time to move on. Possibly more important ... if you are unhappy doing what you are doing, forget the compensation and move ASAP.
Suing your own company for a perceived lack of compensation is the best way to build resentment and to nail the coffin shut on your future with that, or any other, company.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
completely overused in completely wrong contexts to the point of saturation and irrelevancy
no, dear submitard, what apple is being sued for is not "slavery"
really
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Swifty should slow down a bit. He is quoted as saying, "Apple employees" implying that multiple people are involved. While, in reality, the suit is by a single person that is trying to make the suit a class action one.
Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill!
The US and, in particular, California are a far cry from not having any significant workers' rights enshrined in law. Also, none of these people were above working elsewhere if the pay they got at Apple was really that awful for the hours they were putting in.
Employment contracts often have something called a "covenant not to compete", enforced to at least some extent in pretty much every U.S. state but California.
The up-side of being salaried is that I am not tied to a time clock. Some weeks I work less than 40 hours, some weeks I work more. I keep track of what I work and take time off as needed to compensate for extra hours.
The problem is that many salaried positions still require a minimum of 40 hours, and don't get flex time or other compensation... in other words, if you're going to require a minimum time out of your employees, they should be getting compensated somehow for extra time that they work (time off, pay, etc).
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Apple employees aren't slaves. Or even indentured servants. The comparison is offensive given there is real slavery going on elsewhere in the world.
Are they asked to work unreasonable hours and compensated unfairly? Maybe. But they can always quit and seek employment elsewhere. If all of Apple's talent just up and leaves, they'll either fail as a company or rectify their compensation strategy. Capitalism at work.
I know that people love to throw around buzz words that illicit an immediate emotional response but I think people need to truly understand the power those words possess and recognize that, by using the word, they are not empowering their case. They are demonstrating a shocking lack of understanding of our world's history which immediately undermines their case as nothing more than the histrionics of a drama queen. Does this lawsuit have ground to stand on? Possibly. If Apple is treating their staff unfairly then a class action lawsuit is warranted. But, as soon as anyone associated with the case attached "slave" to their description of the situation, my immediate reaction because "attention whore seeking easy payday." If you're going to use an emotionally charged word, make certain it's relevant. In this case, it couldn't be less relevant if they tried. They may as well have simply likened Apple to Nazis while they were at it...
Agreed--they should be compensated for their time, but they shouldn't be calling it slavery. Slavery is a massive problem. We have millions of people worldwide (including many in the US) who actually do live as slaves.
The difference between not being allowed to take your meal breaks and being told you'll need to be raped until you've earned your way out of an $80,000 debt is... the difference between a mosquito bite and being impaled by a triceratops. Twice. Each day.
Only it's harder, because after you've been a slave, people look at you differently, and you look at yourself differently. Sometimes your family won't have anything to do with you, and it's common to have major health problems or psychological problems because of it. And then there's the trick of trying to get back into society.
River of Innocents is a good, accessible primer on the subject. The Wikipedia Human Trafficking page also has some info.
Thousands are enslaved every day. A River of In
For the FLSA section 13(a)(1) exemptions to apply, an employee generally must be paid on a salary basis of no less than $455 per week and perform certain types of work that: is directly related to the management of his or her employer's business, or is directly related to the general business operations of his or her employer or the employer's clients, or requires specialized academic training for entry into a professional field, or is in the computer field, or is making sales away from his or her employer's place of business, or is in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor
He'd say, you don't need to get paid. I agree. Steve Jobs agrees. Where's the problem?
It's because you're on too early in the day.
You see, those of us motivated to get up and get out in order to take hold of the brass ring are already on the job and posting on slashdot. The kinds of people who blame companies for not giving them what they think they're worth normally work jobs later in the day as getting up in the morning would mean not being able to sleep in, as is their right. After all, if companies aren't there to throw money at mediocre workers than what are they there for in the first place?
Was that 'liberal' enough for you?
Didn't they do this as the result of import limits?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I wonder if the definition of "indentured servitude", or "modern day slaves" is different in California than say, the Midwest or the south?
I mean, if the company doesn't provide you with free meals, late and espresso machines, a gym, a pool, four weeks of vacation and cover your transporation costs to and from work, are you a slave?
A 40 hour work week is a vacation for me. It amazes me at the lack of work-ethic in America. Yes, I am American. And it sickens me to hear people complain about how hard they worked when they actually have to put in the full 40 hours. Try being a farmer working from before sun up to after sundown.
Might want to check up on that. Yes, you work less and are paid more, and given equal outputs, you are therefore less productive.
Thus the low levels of entrepreneurial investment in Europe v. United States.
Notice, this is past tense.
I was a part time employee, working 35-40 hours a week. I was doing their inhouse training - all of it, getting within the top 50 company wide - outselling everyone in my store, getting commendations from Corporate because my customers kept contacting them saying how good of a job I did, all of this that sounds like a good retail "slave" would do. I was not late (when some people had over 50-75 late arrivals in 6 months, and were not fired), I did my job, and I did it very well. And yes, I still have documentation from the customers I did work with.
But I was told I was, basically, not kissing enough ass - ie: I didn't feel special to work for Apple, nor did I think I was - I was not able to get full time. They would encourage a process where you are *supposed* to be able to give and receive feedback openly and honestly, and it ended up this wasn't the case. Basically, if you dared to tell a manager or one of their worker flunkies anything but sunshine, rainbows, and clowns, you were on a blacklist.
They didn't want to give benefits, but they still wanted me to work full time.. needless to say, I left the company within a month after this. At the time, I had worked full time hours for approximately 3 months. The other 6 months I was not making enough money to pay rent, much less anything else. The stress from working at an Apple Retail Store was not worth the "cool shirts" and the "cool people".
There are a lot more extenuating circumstances to this, but I'm still considering talking to Corporate, and by Corporate, I mean at the top, so I'll leave it at the beginning. (Mismanagement, Harassment, from the top down, and coverups from Corporate from that matter too, including the fact I basically got railroaded and told my problems didn't matter, when I was going through the handbook and pointing out violations.)
Did they give great discounts? I'm sure. But for working there 9 months, all I still own made by Apple is an iPod. Because they sure as hell didn't pay enough to pay bills, much less buy their products.
I think there could be something more to this story if you look past what he called it, and actually looked at the business practices and violations that are maintained and held - and defended - by Corporate.
"But I can't get an ocean that's deep enough for my day..." ~The Frames, "Fitzcarraldo"
I get a lot of emails from headhunters from offshoring firms that want me to do 2-3 month contracts for Cocoa development, which I'm assuming is because their people in India don't know how to do mac development yet and they need to get the ball rolling on iPhone apps (and possibly train their developers in India to do my job).
I get the feeling that a lot of the companies that are looking to move into iPhone/Mac space these days are trying to offshore Cocoa development to get around the fact that this kind of development is a unique/limited skill which would require paying the non-indian hobbyists/indies who've been doing Objective-C/Cocoa for years a substantially high salary. It's the old "Experienced and expensive developers vs. throw enough cheap warm bodies at the problem" situation.
It's been done. And I'm trying to find a link - it was a PBS show, IIRC. The workers hated the conditions, but it was better than being home or, in the case of the women, being a prostitute. And no one ever brings up that when the locals are paid a "Fair" wage, the local doctors and other professionals give up their jobs to work in the factories leaving everyone without medical care. Going into an other country and forcing your own values on them can have a very destabilizing effect. They know they're being exploited and they're making changes their way.
Don't you think it is way too arrogant to "know" what is good for them?
It sure is.
I think what's been overlooked by these employees is that they're always free to quit and find employment elsewhere. If I worked for a company (at an hourly wage) and they refused to pay me overtime, I'd do the smart thing: leave.
blog |
Someone needs to tell the Apple 'Slaves' that this was already tried by IBM workers about a year and a half ago. IBM responds to overtime Demands ... and they were Promptly met with a swift 15% pay cut in exchange for the availability of overtime.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it!
Having worked some overtime that was not properly compensated earlier in my career, I can tell you that frustrations mount. Excessive, reoccurring overtime is the hallmark of bad management. It made me feel awful, as if the situation was my fault, and that it would be solved if I just worked a bit harder.
No, these people are not slaves, but anyone who has been forced into this scenario certainly appreciates their freedom when it's over.
With the IT staff at most companies being underpaid, and overworked, we need to form a union, or as so many spoon feds point out, we can all quit, and work somewhere else doing something else.
What would happen if IT staff all over the USA were to walk out on the same day?
While I dislike unions, due to the corrupt nature they used to and still have in most cases, there are some good things most unions accomplish, like getting people treated like humans, workers getting a fair pay rate (easy to do, when you reduce executive level pay and bonuses).
Stand up for yourself, or follow the rest of the sheeple to the slaughter.
I thought there would be a bit more depth in /. ers. Instead of discussing the real issue TFA is bringing to attention, it is buried under discussions of how the TFA was presented and what terminology should or shouldnt be used.
A farm of George Bushes you've grown yourselves into, talking only about terminology of the conversation while ignoring the real story.
This use of the word slavery is insulting to the people who are actual slaves (on the Ivory Coast for example) or to the memory of those who were. Slavery is about being completely deprived of your freedom by having someone own you.
If Apple did not respect contracts it's bad, it might be fraud, let them be sued, good, but I doubt that employees trying to leave Cupertino were hunted, captured and whipped.
This use of the word slavery to describe bad working conditions is not innocent at all, it comes straight from Marxist ideology where it originated.
By using this word to describe the situation at Apple, not only are you insulting actual slaves, you are also embracing the most murderous political ideology of all times.
\u262D = \u5350
Umm, no, we are about as productive, as the US suffers from "presenteeism", where people show up and don't do anything.
There's only so many useful hours of work you can get out of someone in a week. The law of diminishing returns applies here.
I've already seen a "joke" about cultists (it was crap, I'm expecting better), any more?
But yeah, a random comment, capitalism sucks.
Seriously, people often don't have a real choice (the freedom to starve...) when it comes to signing contracts, especially in countries (such as the USA) where significant workers rights aren't enshrined in law.
In this case, it appears that the workers signed contracts which said that they wouldn't get paid an hourly rate, which means that they don't get overtime. Which means (at least in this case), that they can get over worked for nothing.
And that is a problem (I've heard it is a very big problem in Japan generally).
Basically (and I'm taking off my anarchist hat for a minute), workers rights do require regulation in a capitalist economy, otherwise they get screwed.
But yeah, a random comment, capitalism sucks.
Oh for socialism so I can sit on my ass at the Government's->Taxpayer's->productive people's expense.
Name one country that has a successful socialist economy. Let me head off Sweden - they'll be broke in not too long. I'm looking for a place to emigrate.
They should pay for the rights to work at that great institution. What next 401k's and holidays off?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
This sounds quite a bit like how salaried workers are treated. I can't recall the last time I was paid overtime or given food to get a project done on time - it was just expected.
And on that note, my weekend will consist of coffee and programming to meet a Monday deadline - yay! But I'm not going to sue anyone over it.
Read the laws reguarding overtime. According the the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employee must be classified as exempt by meeting certain legal requirements, or they must be paid 1.5x their hourly wage. The law specifically states that no contract or agreement between employee and employer can override the law.
Read all about it, you very well might be a victim too!
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/flsa/
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I remember when slashdot was full of smart people with a liberal philosophy, not a bunch douchebag flag waving capitalists.
'Liberal' as in "let people interact freely & voluntarily without restrictions" or Liberal as in "let's make people conform to our value system and worldview"?
The average teaching salary is 45k, they get their summers off so accounting for 3/4ths of the year it means they would get 60k a year if they worked year round. The reason you don't hear teachers complaining about their pay is because they are compensated well for their expertise (the year I got my undergrad 40% of education majors were on the deans list less then 5% of engineers were).
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Apple ... we pay our employees poorly and pass the double the cost on to you.
Wait what?
I'm one of those older guys who worked a Union job long ago so I at least remember the upside/downside.
1. It's important to remember that there are MANY productive, efficient unions. Much of the real-money jobs in the entertainment industry are unionized and that doesn't seem to harm anyone but the producers who, magically seem to make bazillions of dollars anyway. The docks in the U.S. are unionized and that doesn't meaningfully increase your freight costs. Most of your public safety personnel are unionized...
2. I for one think it's possible to tear down the old-fashioned union and focus instead as a negotiating block of super-effective workers. As we get older we are certainly more efficient and as long as we keep the skill set fresh, we are worth the extra pay. The super-worker block negotiates wages with the employer perfectly capable of keeping an open shop and fire/hire at will. The super-effective worker pays the organization for labor representation and ideally the organization offers employment insurance and other services that are better bought as a group.
It's far from perfect, but I think it's a start.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
In other news Steve Jobs just bought a new yacht and is sailing to the south of France.
Basically, you don't have to have everyone in a class file a class action lawsuit for it be presented, but now everyone at Apple is now tagged as a slacker because a few people that were unhappy and yet too lazy to find jobs elsewhere decided to bring the whole house down. Of course, the employee s might get a free soda or a coffee extra out of the suit, but the lawyers are going to walk away rich out of money that could have gone towards more R&D, headcount, or, earnings per share. So, to make up the slack from the lawsuit, the Apple employees are simply going to have to work -even harder-.
Dumb.
This is my sig.
Right. This place is chock full of libertarians, and always has been.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
IANAL, but these people may have a case. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, workers can be classified as exempt only under certain circumstances, and changes to the FLSA made in 2004 included a number of controversial changes regarding the the definition of exempt employees.
After some poking around, I found this which shows California rules for classifying workers as "managerial" and therefore automatically exempt:
"For an employee to be exempt as a manager s/he must:
1. Have primary duties and responsibilities that involve the management of the enterprise.
2. Customarily and regularly direct the work of two or more other employees.
3. Have the authority to hire or fire other employees or to make suggestions, which will be given particular weight, about personnel decisions regarding other employees.
4. Customarily and regularly exercise discretionary power.
5. Spend more than 50 percent of his or her time engaged in managerial duties that meet the tests in Items 1 through 4 and
6. Earn a monthly salary equivalent to at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time employment. The current minimum salary for someone to be categorized as an exempt employee is $2,340 a month, which is twice the starting minimum wage for full-time employment."
So we are talking about hourly workers who may be shoehorned into exempt status because of some vague wording, such as "management of the enterprise" or "exercise discretionary power".
Given the complexity of the issue and the visibility and power of Apple, it's hard to believe that this is a purely frivolous lawsuit. California has had a number of successful multimillion-dollar settlements of overtime claims in past years. I'd be interested in reading the filing.
iSpartacus to the rescue!
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
presenting the facts as they are is sufficient to cause outrage
but the language used to present the issue here turns the reader off. if you don't understand that inflammatory rhetoric turns people off, then you will never get any sympathy for any of your concerns in life
salting the facts with inflammatory rhetoric like "slavery" makes the issue sound like a bunch of attention whores with entitlement issues who are clueless about real problems in this world (such as REAL slavery). of course this isn't the case and the issue has merit. so what is served with the use of language that suggests the issue has no merit?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I can see a lot of bashing here, but we should be VERY CAREFULL about bashing the labor laws that protect the middle class and the economy.
Businesses like to bash unions, but unions delivered this country into prosperity along with the aftermath of WWII.
Will I say unions are not corrupt? of course not, but the real problem with business/unions is that there is an adversarial relationship between those who work and those who control capital.
At this point in time, unions need to fight hard for benefits and wages. Why? Because businesses don't want to pay workers. Every time a union has tried to be flexible with big business, buy taking pay and benefit cuts in hard times, the business don't restore the levels on the turn around. So it is a constant fight, businesses can't expect an cooperative relationship if there is no fair "give and take." Lost in the "shareholder value" Juggernaut is the workers and stake holders who get shafted who must have some rights in a fair society.
CEOs and stock holders get all the money. The people who work and produce the product would all be eliminated if possible. That's what off shoring is all about.
Say what ever you want, but that is NOT the way to make a lasting free society.
... what about the game industry? I thought 65+ hour weeks were the norm? So, if the suit against Apple wins, guess the game biz will move overseas??
Or, will sensible scheduling and personnel management break out? Hmm... I vote for overseas.
by Art Bears
After this I saw multitudes
forced from the land
cleared away for the walls.
Dispossed refugees who were totally free.
Free to starve!
Or to slave!
Free to choose a way of being:
To labour or DIE!
I saw cities explode with this freedom
And covered my eyes.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Someone pulled the 100k/year figure out of nowhere, I think that salary amount would have exempted any IT professionals from any overtime pay.
Just give the worker iTunes credits. Then that could lead to an iUnion and an iStrike. It would be just like my grandfather's time in the coal mines.
Sic Semper MicroSoft
Maybe the Japanese can learn from Apple employees, for a change.
India's New Cheap Fuel-less Bike
No one's saying denying workers their rights under CA law is a good thing. But slavery is also a huge problem, and a much worse one on an individual level than not getting one's work break.
It would be like someone living in a normal apartment in Boston that had a problem with the hot water heater every four hours complaining that they were being forced to live in an outhouse. Or a tar pit. Only like there really were millions who had to live in outhouses and tar pits. The claim takes the focus away from the hot water heater.
And there really are millions of slaves.
Thousands are enslaved every day. A River of In
Co-locating your production facility in the same region that your customers are is a necessary currency hedge in the auto biz. Otherwise a change in currency values could quickly make a [foreign car] un-affordable. This happened to Porche a few decades back....
You're clearly biased against conservatives. Doesn't that make your (implicit) claim of being a liberal somewhat hypocritical?
I'd say that with the increasingly high cost of fuel, many jobs may be moving closer to home (until a cheap fuel source is again realized).
Many companies are starting to realize that shipping parts is getting more and more expensive. In some cases, it's cheaper to keep the work closer to the distribution point, utilizing as many local resources (including workers) as possible.
While this doesn't like apply to the outsourced-helpdesk scenario, in cases of companies such as automotive manufacturers it may indeed be playing a part in decisions as to where vehicles/parts are manufactured.
I think it is common for technical staff members to be classified as "exempt workers" in California. I had to sign some paper to acknowledge that status when I joined my company. I suppose the Apple employees in this case are non-exempt.
If there is a slave job some where that I can be abused and used for sex 40-60 hours a week please post a link....
How about making sure it's in your contract _BEFORE_ signing the frickin' thing? sheesh...
I believe the libertarian ideal that is popular in engineering and IT fields contributes to this sort of situation.
A libertarian believes that all success is personally earned. In addition, people who self-identify as libertarians tend to believe that they are personally more capable that most people, and are being "held back" by systems that compel cooperation and compromise.
This creates an incentive to compete against coworkers, and the most obvious way to do so is to work beyond normal business hours and expectations. It also creates a strong opposition to unions, collective bargaining, and class action lawsuits, which makes it easy for companies in the IT sector to limit their labor battles to individual workers.
Now--that said, there are huge problems with many unions in the U.S. as they currently exist. With few meaningful labor fights left, many large unions are turning to activities that look more and more like corporate extortion.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Help, I'm trapped in a system software factory" If only we'd believed them... Rob
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
"let's make people conform to our value system and worldview"?
No, you meant Conservatives.
No, Liberals...
No, Libertarians....
No, Socialists.....
No, Communists......
OMG, they're ALL THE SAME! WTF?!?!?!
Damn. I've got to stop with the decaf...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
A lot of people are getting hung up on the use of the word slavery in this context. Now, I agree that what were seeing here isn't remotely close to slavery, indentured servitude, etc.
But use of on "over the top" word doesn't change the possibility that Apple's employment practices may be violation of State or Federal law. A lot of employers over use the salaried position category to avoid paying overtime. Most employee's do not understand their rights enough to know the difference to they put up with it assuming that is just part of the job, when, in fact, they are being abused.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
... angry customers sue Apple, stating they've been enslaved by the brand.
See here: http://macinations.net/news/autonomy.html
My web domain.
Heh
Actual story: Apple is not paying overtime as required by law
Wired article: Apple is using employees almost like indentured servants!
Slashdot aritcle: Apple is turning workers into slaves!!
Keanu as Klaatu. Don't forget that part of the story. Keanu Reeves adds suck to just about anything he touches. His manager/agent recently got the rights to do a live-action version of Cowboy Bebop, so now it's almost a certainty that will be FUBAR as well. Keanu will either be Spike or Vicious. Guaranteed suckfest.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
-----begin rant-----
So you had to work more than 40 hours a week? Had to sometimes do weekends and they didn't buy you lunch? Cry me a freakin river why don't you?
I am a network engineer in New York City, everyone here works over 40 hours a week, EVERYONE. Many IT people have to work on weekends to accomplish updates and project rollouts. I take calls after 11pm all the time, many of our employees wake up at 2AM to execute trades.
If you don't like doing any of these things, don't do it. They probably won't/can't fire you for it, and if they do then I could understand a lawsuit. But do not work for 12 years putting in extra hours, never bringing it up, then finally filing a lawsuit after all those years you lazy bastard. Did you never receive a bonus for your extra effort? Did you never get a pay raise, promotion or other perk becuase of how hard you worked?
California labor laws are starting to sound to me like they system they have over in France. Who cares about end results as long as we are comfortable and barely actually have to be here? If you want to be paid by the hour you should have requested that YEARS AGO and see where that would have taken you. You bet you would be making less and been on the fast track to nowheresville. People care about results and generally reward top performers.
-----end rant-----
It's not in your interest, on balance, to have a career-level technical job and opt for non-exempt status.
Be careful what you ask for, because the same status that requires things like overtime pay, has some serious downsides as well.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
you or the other guy?
I guess we should ask those who are Chinese and live in China.
don't just assume that because you work forty hours a week (or less in certain countries) that that is the ideal.
Based on their perspective, their cultural norms, that iPod factory job might just be heaven. Then we can throw in interference of outside countries with their we are holier than thou and this is all the hours we deem you worthy of and suddenly this guy works less hours and isn't as happy.
how do we know? You certainly don't but your willing to vilify the previous poster with values no more backed up with facts than his
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The reason for assembling locally is import taxes, you don't pay import tariffs on parts but on assembled products. It's a measure put up by many nations to balance the influx of finished products with local employment.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
iSlave
mod me troll please
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h
First of all, this in no way even closely resembles slavery. It also does not closely resemble indentured servitude.
Employees suing over unpaid overtime is nothing new. Similarly, being paid for 40 hours when you worked 45 is so incredibly far from slavery that it only serves to marginalize the travesty that was real slavery throughout history.
It may just be a sign of the times.
I don't mean to seem negative, but several recent reports articles seem to indicate that economic conditions might be less than ideal for IT workers. Today, August 7, CNN reports: Jobless claims surge to highest level in 6 years. On Auguest 6, CNN reports: Bureau of Labor Statistics reports big drop in tech jobs - Almost 50,000 IT positions lost in last 12 months. On July 29, this Wall Street Journal blog claims: Tech Departments Cut Budgets, Stop Hiring. Interesting to note that Microsoft still claims that there are sever shortages of IT workers. Wipro claims the USA is being protectionist by not expanding the H-1B caps, and both presidential candidates seem to be guest worker friendly.
Mac fans show their people skills again.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well youll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake
Dear God, are you really suggesting that not only do the Apple employees not have a case, but that they're getting too "uppity" and deserve to work even harder for less money?
Do you work in management or something? I haven't seen such open contempt for workers since I was bagging groceries in high school.
Actually, slavery isn't always racial.
In fact, the racial version of using Blacks is a quirk from the age of colonization of America. Mostly because the locals had too strong a warrior culture and preferred to die than to do forced labour as slaves. (Something the Europeans liked to mis-represent as "the Indians are lazy".) So since there was nobody else in the area they could enslave, they had to import some more obedient slaves from Africa. Which incidentally happened to be black.
But if you look back in history, for most of human civilization, people used their fellow man as a slave. Prisoners of war were a major source of slaves, for example, and a lot of the warfare was between highly related populations across an arbitrary border. Semitic Babilon took the semitic Jews as slaves. Same race, highly similar language, it didn't matter anway. Scythians took other Scythians as slaves, and sold them to the greeks. Spartans had the Hellots as their serfs/slaves, and they were both greeks. Romans, for the first 400 years or so, fought only inside Italy. Other than the occasional Gaul raiters or Greek army, who do you think they took as slaves in their wars? Egypt seems to have had _some_ slavery, although not as extensive or oppressive as initially assumed. Most were, in fact, just as Egyptian as their masters. (Which would partially explain the social stigma they attached to being too mean to one's slaves.)
Or if you look at more modern times, chain gangs and other forms of forced labour, often were worse than actual slavery. African slaves were expensive, especially after Victorian England started trying to force an end to their being hauled across the Atlantic, plus made various countries and states sign agreements to no longer sponsor or cooperate with such practices. The supply became a lot less abundant, so the price went up. The owner had _some_ incentive to keep them alive and healthy. Or at least away from crippling injuries, if possible. Rented convicts, on the other hand, had no such value or penalties attached. Even having to wear the chains for long periods produced ulcers and gangrenes that were often life threatening, but nobody gave a damn, essentially.
But at the very least, they were used as, basically, slaves and equally deprived of any freedom, choice or control over their own life. Most had less of all 3 than what the ancient Greeks or Romans called "slaves." And a lot of them were just as white as the guys forcing them to work.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
But before they moved to the factory, they were still working 15-hour days as subsistence farmers, making no money, and living in squalor.
Got any proof of that? Did you talk to any of those workers? I'm just saying...
Perhaps next time they should try turning them into zombies instead? Zombies don't complain...
I'd have sympathy for anyone in their situation who did not refer to themselves as slaves or indentured servants or whatever, there are thousands (possibly millions?) of people in this situation in the world, for a bunch of Starbucks drinking Apple employees to refer to their unpaid overtime as slavery is just disgusting and insensitive
Regardless of the validity of this class action suit, calling them 'modern day slaves' is yet one more display of attention whoring emo faggotry. If you have a fucking valid point, you don't need exagerations to support it, specially exagerations that make a mockery of real issues (such as ACTUAL modern day slavery.)
If they are going to go the way of mindless sensationalism, they may as well go all the way and accuse Apple of war crimes and genocide against them as well as killing puppies.
I'd take a lower paying job with an expectation of 40 hours over a higher paying job with the expectation of 50-60+ hours.
I've recently been to apple store at 5th avenue and went to the restroom.
There was a guy there who opened bags, at first I didn't understand what he was doing but after a further inspection he was *checking employees to see if they have stolen anything* before leaving their post.
So, a huge corporate, making billions, and having no trust in their employees. Great.
I am starting to hate apple.
position? Obviously, if you are in a position where you get paid the same no matter how much you work, you (the worker) are going to try to work as little as possible, while your employer is going to try to get you to work as much as possible.
Personally, I like hourly contracting gigs more. If I come in late and leave early, I get paid less. If I show up early and stay late, I get paid more. this way management doesn't have an incentive to overwork me, and I don't have an incentive to slack off.
This particular abuse (classifying low-level employees as "exempt" management employees, and pressuring them to work unpaid overtime) is very common among software/hardware companies. I don't know anyone in the software industry that hasn't had a job where they were rated "exempt", but didn't have any management responsibility, or any real independent control of how they performed their job functions.
On the other side of the coin, I've never known anybody to be fired for simply working their 40 hours and then leaving. In most companies, it doesn't even get noticed. I'm sure it does happen that people get fired for not working long enough hours, but I'd bet it's fairly rare. A certain amount of pressure is applied, and since everybody else is doing it, it's hard to say no.
A class-action lawsuit is really not the right solution to this problem, though - it's only going to make a bunch of lawyers very rich. Better enforcement of the existing labor laws might be a good place to start. Failing that, it might be time for the tech support workers of the world to organize.
Turtles on top.
you don't have enough of the work that the person is great at to have a full time job at it. So paying them a full time job without getting a full days work out of him helps both: you get someone who has great potential available when needed and they get to goof off.
...smart people with a liberal philosophy...
This is called an oxymoron. Look it up. The real problem which is triggering your idiocy is that "liberal" now means communist and "conservative" now means religious douchebag. I think you'll find by and large that people here are communist like you when it suits their needs (e.g. anti-Microsoft), but generally tend towards libertarian.
It all comes back to exempt vs non exempt. Back in y2k when programmers were needed by the millions, overtime pay would have killed all the y2k projects from a cost stand point, so IT folks were generally exempt from overtime and worked to death. Now the tide has turned and finally the feds are telling employers that programmers are not exempt from overtime rules and now they must pay. Just imagine if the y2kers could have sued for all those 80 hour weeks... thank the statute of limitations....
Because of reduced import taxes and shipping costs , not because of labor costs.
You can bet the largely useless incompetents in mgt. surely did though (or, doesn't the term "golden parachute" ring a bell & raise anyone's "ire" here?) - this is why there ought to be an "information workers union". God knows, though, that the "powers that be" would immediately do anything in their power to stop that happening.
(I mean, most mgt. in MIS/IS/IT in thie field can't even do the job themselves, & never have, hands-on for years in the trenches. Yet, boss around those that can (great flunkies that are nothing more than the taskmaster with the whip most times & cannot do this level of work themselves 9/10 times)).
Why does mgt. get paid more than actual production workers then, since most of them can't even do the job of their subordinates?? The answer's obvious - they're "frat boys", whose only asset is their "allies", but certainly not their 'expertise'. Any idiot can be a babysitter basically, & that is about all most mgt. in this field, really is (& yes, I have been in mgt. for a few years & saw those that surrounded myself, largely incompetent every one of them).
Now - There is something very fundamentally wrong with having people be "superiors" over others, when most of them, clearly are not by any stretch of the imagination.
This is part of the problem in the United States especially, & small wonder she's "taking a nosedive" - the biggest scum & criminals there is have risen to the top. Whose fault is it? Your own - you let it happen citizens of the USA, all the way from corporate mgt. (Enron ring a bell?), up to the highest eschelons of politics (or, is GWBushby & Darth Cheney doing a good job? NO way - were I or you to do such a shoddy job, we'd be fired quickly).
Please, don't try to feed me any crap about "mgt. makes decisions", they don't do a DAMN thing, except take the advice of others (& risks? We ALL take those, everyday - so don't try that crap either). Well, what happens if the advisors make a mistake (or, intentionally mislead the incompetents @ the helm in mgt.? People get fired due to their incompetence & mistakes, which often cost, hugely) & advise incorrectly? The stooges get away clean with golden parachutes anyways, costing YOU, the stockholder and consumer (in higher prices).
Lastly, also don't try to pull the "but programmers can't talk to 'normal end users'" because that is complete crap - we're end users ourselves, also.
It's time we freed these slaves from their Jobs overlord. Meet me at the internet cafe at Hollywood and Vine and ask for my code name Harriet Tubman. Leave your Macbook air and you too shall know freedom that shines like a ray of light (Silverlight that is). Signed, Bill
Only apple would get so much defence, imagine this thread was about zune and not apple.
You all suck balls, really.
This isnt slavery, they have a choice. They also agreed to it when they hired on.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Apple Crumb cake that is... well maybe just the crumbs..now GET BACK TO WERK You Maggots..AND QWIT YER SNIVELIN!!!
Umm, no, we are about as productive, as the US suffers from "presenteeism", where people show up and don't do anything.
There's only so many useful hours of work you can get out of someone in a week. The law of diminishing returns applies here.
Yes, that explains the high unemployment rates in Europe.
What's the unemployment rate for under-25-year-olds in, say, France?
I remember when slashdot was full of smart people with a liberal philosophy, not a bunch douchebag flag waving capitalists.
... you 'remember'? or you 'think you remember'. There is a difference.
I remember when slashdot was full of smart people with a liberal philosophy
Hold on, I just heard the oxymoron siren going off!
Watch what you wish for. IBM employees sued and what did they get? A 15%-20% pay cut and a reclassification as "non-exempt" (read non-professional, blue-collar, etc).
Next move: ship out jobs (more easily).
Read the occupational characteristics for exempt vs. non-exempt software professionals.
Yep, stand up for your rights; at least you'll have them to comfort you at night while you are getting screwed.
Because, hey at least they are screwing you in a "legal" manner now!
Another example of the continuing deliteracy in the United States. This times it's the undefining of the word "slave". Apple employees are not owned in any sense of the word. They are not forced to work for Apple. They are not coerced to work overtime without pay. There are no guns or whips involved. No unsanitary slave quarters out back. No policy that employee offspring are also property. The claims in the lawsuit are a cruel mockery to all real slaves past and present.
If you don't want to work overtime without pay, then tell your boss "no". It's the ultimate safe word. If you say "no" and he fires you, then you sue. But you don't sue for what you have voluntarily chosen to do.
Please don't give my any crap about "not having a choice". You always have a choice. So what if you end up unemployed? Real slaves in history who ran away were often castrated and sometimes killed. You're a technical worker in the heart of Silicon Valley. Comparing your lot with theirs is the pathetic whining of a loser.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
"Even if shipping your job someplace else or just eliminating it makes financial sense, I'm sure you'll be fine."
And I'm sure classifying you as "Non-Exempt" (non-professional, blue collar, etc.) will do more good than harm in that area.
"Great news guys! We're all gonna die..."
Or does the headline evoke images of Steve Jobs firing up some kind of Mind Control Ray?
I wholeheartedly agree that Apple is required to follow state work laws, and should be punished if they are not doing so.
HOWEVER.. some IT Dork that probably makes 85k+ a year calling himself a "Modern Day Slave", because he doesn't get overtime? I'm sure there a some illegals working in textile plants that would disagree.
Awesome!
Contradiction alert. If they were smart, they wouldn't be liberals. (In the modern sense -- in a classical sense, sure, but then they'd be capitalists, too.)
I remember when it was only half-full of nerds.
Oh, and get off my lawn!
Where did you think Steve Jobs and Upper Management get their HUGE Bonus from: Oh, You guessed it his slaves!
This really doesn't seem like anything new for Apple. After reading Fire in the Valley, it talks about how is employees worked a harsh amount of hours, with no sleep, all around the time they were transitioning between Apple II to Macintosh.
I don't know how old you are but what you are describing is exactly what is happening all over the US in many jobs( I can't say how many because I'm pulling this from my own life experience but I've talked about this with a lot of different people and they all tend o agree). Like lab mice and flies, the time tables for the data are dramatically shorter in retail work. I worked in mall retail jobs form 1995-2000 and NONE of them will let you move to full time unless you are one
"vested in the company mo-fo". The turn over is so high in these jobs, including Apple Stores, that the can afford the two weeks training over benefits every time.
The reason this is endemic of a bigger problem is because the policy of expected benefits and workers rights are in conflict with the philosophy of business. Reduce margins like benefits and wasteful spending and increase dividens otherwise know as "get more money as many ways as possible". The longer a person works at a particular job the less likely he/she is to do anything to jeopardize that job. This means you can do things like ask them to come in on the weekend for some catch up work or see if they can get you that report by morning for the big meeting even though they gave it to you to do just that afternoon.
If you want to know how bad you're getting screwed just look at your salary as an hourly number. (hourly pay=your salary/2818 hrs) This is with an 8 hr. day w/ 2 weeks removed for vacation. Make sure you add in overtime hours and figure if you think it's enough to put up with the shit you're getting dealt. Any time you negotiate a salary it should be under the assumption that it's 8 hrs per day. Every hour you work on top of that is a smaller hourly rate over all. My last job saved $24,000.00 in work before my first 6 months of employment were up. That meant in a job where the pay was 60K I was going to be working the equivalent of two 35k jobs maybe even three 20k jobs by the end of the year. All for the glory of the Co. Hell I even added 15K onto the salary requirement because I knew it would require some OT.
If a skilled job ever drops under 15 per hr. QUIT. You can do better in something else. Even if you can't you should quit anyways. You won't be getting any raise that will compensate you for the money lost the previous year.
If more people actually stuck to their ideas about working WITH people instead of working for them, we would all have better positions in which to negotiate fair compensation. The argument that you have to sacrifice in order to get a better position is BS. This is perpetuated by people who had to sacrifice something they hold dear to get the job they thought was the holy grail job. Of coarse they don't realize that any job in a company that makes over 40K and under 150K is a bulls eye for letting go. Usually those numbers are for higher skilled people who aren't management. This means that the people just underneath who ever this is can do the job but gets paid less to do so.
This might sound bitter but I've watched this happen three times in the last seven years and it seems pretty business as usual.
Are they asked to work unreasonable hours and compensated unfairly? Maybe. But they can always quit and seek employment elsewhere.
Which means that since they didn't quit and find better employment elsewhere they didn't truly consider their employment conditions unfair. There had to be something they felt was worthwhile about continuing to do it, or they would have left.
To illustrate: What if their salaries were cut to $5? They'd have left, right? How about $50K? $30K? $20K? $10K? There's a breaking point for everybody and none of them reached it.
The other option is to assume they were all idiots. That's patently offensive.
Sure, Apple may have been violating California law, but they weren't pulling one over on their employees.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Please, you have to be joking. Most of these people are getting paid handsomely. A slave is someone who doesn't get paid and has no choice. In California you can legally quit your job any time you want. Once you are making the big bucks you're a professional, and as far as I know you don't require additional compensation such as overtime.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
First, the link is down so I wasn't able to read the linked article.
Second, This may not resemble slavery as we usually see it, but it certainly represents semi-slavery conditions after emancipation, specifically sharecropping.
Instead of people working land owned by someone else, whom can demand whatever share of the crop he wishes resulting in unfair compensation, these employees are working for a business owned by someone else whom has them work relentless without being fairly compensated. Both are situations of peonage.
Third, I once worked as a software engineer for a company which hired me on as salary and then had me work and insane amount of hours. A standard day was 12 hours, a longer day was 15, sometimes employees would work 20 hours and take a 5 hour nap at work on the floor or a couch, if one was available, and then get up and get back to work for another 20 hours. One time I worked two days straight without sleep. One month I was working 100 hours each week. With the salary I was making and the hours I was working, I was effectively making $10 an hour. At that rate the contractors from Mexico were making more than I was, the contractors from India were making double.
Why didn't I leave? Well, it was my first job and I guess I was worried about finding another with so little experience under my belt; there were a lot of other employees in the same boat. The culture was very cult-like and they used the fear of getting fired to keep us motivated. There was also a $20,000 bonus we would start collecting after 6 months, but of course half the company was laid off before that ever happened.
Was I enslaved? Probably not, it was my fear of finding another job that enslaved me. Was I being exploited? You bet. They hired me on salary knowing I would be working long hours and they would effectively be saving money. I was classified as an exempt employee so I would not be protected under FLSA, yet I was working more like a non-exempt employee, hammering out code while being micro-managed. I've heard Google is kind of like this, that if you don't work long hours then your not googley enough for the team. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what Apple employees are up in arms about.
The more work employers can get out of us, the cheaper we become and the more money they get to line their pockets with. The more employers that adopt this practice, the less options we have when it comes to jobs requiring a reasonable amount of hours, the more this looks like the sharecropping situation that followed emancipation. You can be sure that employers would like nothing better than to be able to turn us into slaves by another name.
I remember when slashdot was full of smart people with a liberal philosophy
I think that was a passing fad.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I thought the article was about getting laid, seriously.
Isn't Mac Fanboism all about trying to attract girls with shiny gizmos?
(ohho.. my karma is going right down for this!)
Me too. That and Natalie Portman trolls.
I'm Steve Jobs, motherfuckers!!!!!! </Samuel L. Jackson voice>
Limina.Log
Why don't they just stop doing overtime? When I'm not paid overtime I don't overtime.
I like the pay. I just don't get any of it. ;^p
testing out my trending skills
...being subsidized by past gains, equities, and against future via credit. During the 50s there was very big economic differentials across continents that allowed the US to build this wealth for growing the 60s, 70s, etc.- Europe was rebuilding industries after WWII.
Without forced savings for their future (pensions, etc.) they will simply backload the economic costs (most people will not save regardless). That will affect everyone in the US. How will we fare against the other nations that are now building, investing, today's money for similar wealth and possibly better infrastructures than ours, now competing on a on a much more level playing field?
When there are rafts-full of people in the US who have no pensions or savings w/healthcare expenses, say 2025, maybe only then will the economics be forced to match (people have x dollars, sell at that price or go under, lower cost medical).
A (very poor) paraphrase of a comment I heard that made me think lately is: When a typical middle-aged American starts worrying about Retirement, what is a European of a similar age thinking about? What hobby to pursue in retirement?
No, I think the US success was clear, but one that will not likely be repeated.
Actually when you submit of your own free will you can't be a slave. Slaves have no choice in their bondage. Apple employees can always quit and maybe if enough of them do Apple will get the message.
hrm. you can be "left"
you can be libertarian
but yes, please, correct my ignorance, and link me to some means of joining the "left libertarian" party
or perhaps donating to the "left libertarian" candidate?
or maybe some text book on the tenets of "left libertarian" politics?
anything?!?! at all?
Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
Notice how both the "it just werks!11!" and "switch" campaigns ended exactly after the epic failure that was the Leoptard launch. It gets kind of hard to tell people "it just werkz!!11!" when you are furiously censoring your own support forums to deny there are any problems.
Oh... but they are better than Microsoft. Yeah, sure they are.
A staggering 20,000 fatalities per year.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I finally find a comment I want to mod to "+5 Has a Bloody Clue" and I'm outta mod points.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
OMG you people are hysterically clueless. A slve or indentured slave does not have the choice to leave and go find a better job. Apple employees can quit any time they want. Its not like Apple is the only employer in town. Its not the same as a coal mining town.
You people really need to grown and stop complaining. What you think is suffering is privilege in other people's eyes. Try working for minimum wage or living in a third world country.
...to slide their daily ration of tofu under their office door. My heart bleeds for them.
Are you kidding? Why do you want to mess with min. wage fast food jobs? I mean...these are NOT meant to be living wages. They are they are there for high school and college kids to earn extra money while in school.
[...]
Hmm..I don't eat fast food very often [...]
It shows. I mean, when's the last time you saw a fast food restaurant that was mostly staffed by teenagers & college students? For me, it was the 90's, and it was a Chick-Fil-A that made a point of hiring kids from the local foster homes they sponsor.
The vast majority of fast food workers I see are low-income wage slaves who do not (and will not) have a college education, just trying to get by. This is true even if you cut out the kitchen staff (which stopped being kids and started being immigrant labor as far back as when *I* was a kid). I'd say that I only see someone in that high school to college age group maybe 1 in 5 times I eat at a fast food restaurant, and I almost never see two people in that age group.
I have mixed feelings about unionizing fast food, but stop believing the fantasy that kids are the only people working McJobs. It's just not true anymore in the places where I've lived.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Sounds like a part of an "Onion" article.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... we CAN say "precedent".
:o)
Not quite the same thing.
"Hey guys, I found this post on Slashdot suggesting we'd stoop so low as to describe our new line as creating a Holocaust of flavor, can you believe that?"
"Terrible, terrible."
"Wait a minute, isn't denying the Holocaust illegal in Germany?"
"Yeah..."
"So if our new line has a Holocaust of flavor, no one can deny it!"
"Randy, you're a genius. Get Klaus on the phone!"
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
You're not making your own case. If you re-read your own post you'll find it to be "mostly unintelligible".
Would that include the people on your enemies list who have been accused of being sockpuppets and shills just because they disagreed with you?
For everyone saying "they chose to work there", just STFU. Choice has nothing to do with it. Jobs (of the employment kind, or the Steve kind) are hard enough to come by as it is.
I love how people assume choice is the same thing as free will. I could quite my job right now. I have the free will to do so. But I have a house and a car and a family to support. So I don't have the choice to quit.
Get's shit done.
Everyone needs to grow the hell up, here. Nobody seems to care about this stuff unless it's a huge Tech company.
I don't see huge 744 post outcries over "Employees flipping burgers have shitty jobs, denied overtime", do I?
As we've all read Dred Scott v. Sanford on our friday nights, instead of hitting the clubs, slaves in the United States are not considered citizens. If they are not citizens, they are not allowed the right to sue in court. The Apple employees must be citizens if they're allowed to sue in court.
Last post!
I've worked in the tech sector all my life and never heard of anyone claiming "overtime." Is this some US thing?
I thought overtime was for people working in factories in the 19th century - not Apple employees.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Why would anyone be surprised by this? Apple is a big company. All the *good* stuff you think about apple is just hype. Look at Steve Jobs - he is as bad as Bill Gates ever was. Worse even if you read the stories lately.
My car is worse than Hitler. My boss is a nazi. Having Blu-Ray players forced on us is worse than genocide.
My friend's 2 year old kids are sociopathic evil monsters. Being forced to sit through Sex and the City with my girlfriend was the worst form of torture ever. When I was growing up my parents treated me like a slave when I was forced to mow the lawn once a week.
I nearly died when I had to sit through the terrible dialogue in Transformers. My friend nearly gave me a heart attack when he said he was actually going to eat vegetables voluntarily. If Uwe Boll makes one more movie I'm going to blind myself with a fork.
Cow Cube
brings new meaning to "IT JUST WORKS!"
I worked at NeXT and Apple. I'd love to see what their pay ranges are for if they are above $25/hr they can f**k right off as anyone getting that kind of wage field support calls is money ahead.
Hell, when I started as an QA engineer for NeXT it was $19.50/hr for a 6 week trial run. It was later regular-full-time salaried employee but the wage sure as hell didn't jump up like you'd expect--I just had a starting point to expand into engineering.
Later on when the merger happened most reviews and salaries were frozen until solvency was returned. I worked 60 hours a week and that actually wasn't a problem for me as the work was enjoyable. The problem occurred when I got sick of my reviews being delayed so I left.
I'll say this, the jobs since then have been far less enjoyable, mindnumbingly boring and even the pay increases weren't much so in hindsight it was a stupid move.
As a multiple degree engineer [mechanical and computer science] I sure as hell am not going to feel pity for call center support personnel whining if that hourly rate is above $25/hr.
My team of 5 supported hundreds of Enterprise NeXT customers daily and we had tens of thousands of logs to maintain, edit, open, cross-reference, include changes and close, while walking joe blow developer through a redeployment, Netinfo redesign of master/slave relationships, to EOF database models, to checking over Openstep code, system installs of 4 architectures, et.al BEFORE we escalated it to Engineering proper [AppKit, FoundationKit, WOF, etc]
I have a suggestion: find a competitive environment that is comparable to Apple Call Centers and leave if you think it's better, or improve your technology skills and network at Apple's main campus to see if there are job openings you'd be a fit. Opportunity exists if you can see beyond the Call Center job.
In a pure logical social captialism enviroment...
The weak are below the strong, if you can not handle it, fight or flight. Obviouslly these employees are trying to stand their ground with apple. Ultimately one of 2 options will occur. The employees will be punished or they will be rewarded temporarly and then punished.
It's a gamble but that is how it works.
Yeah. As if you did not post the GP post yourself to get the karma back that you lost from imitating twitter. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
... where, unless you are upper management, you are getting the shaft. Being a developer, I particularly like how (at my company anyway) our sales staff pulls down Director level salary and obscene commissions on the gross (NOT net) product they push out the door ... even when it means a loss for the company.
Then apply to work in sales.
paintball
yep
the "coward" description is particularly apt.
Debian FTW
While I mostly agree, I rated him as the lead in "A Scanner Darkly"
Debian FTW
the complaint can be found here: http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/casdce/3:2008cv01410/276150/1/
Problems with overtime pay is one more reason to start up a business working as a consultant or provide your services as freelance rather than sign a full employment contract. Being a business or freelance, it is up to you then to charge for your work.
That's because cars are about the only consumer item that Americans get dangerously nationalistic about. Japanese factories are a result of the "voluntary" import restrictions imposed by Regan in 82. The Japanese corporations are well aware how easy tariffs can follow, and in particular how damaging a coordinated hate campaign by US unions and companies would be.
The "voluntary" restrictions are technically no longer on the books, but they exist in practice. About four or five years ago Toyota limited their booming sales to the US because they didn't want a backlash. BBC ran a mention of it but I can't pull that up through their search. Anyone got a link for that or similar handy?
if Linux is excrement, and OSX is based off of BSD which has a lot of ties with Linux... then OSX is like a turd dropping a turd? or perhaps you'd prefer the delusion that it's a polished turd?
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
The case will likely settle out of court for a handsome sum, as one employment attorney says in a CIO.com article on the lawsuit.
SLAVERY disparages the memories of those who were whipped to near death while working in fields, and paid nothing.
Read the lawsuit. They didn't get fed lunch. LUNCH. Slaves got to eat.
{removes tounge from cheek}
Who gives a fuck about france?
Now they've gone too far the other way, and no denying. It doesn't help that they discriminatory laws based on age, either.
bloody whiners.
I'll bet they've never had to feed a house of four adults on $20/month while working every waking hour without break - or any pay (or much). I'm not sure that even counts as slavery - or the four years I put into a company that paid me inconsistently (if at all), all the while forcing me to stay in a small room working.
I really don't miss the far north. Took me years to recover from all of that. (I would have been jailed or equivalent if I quit...)
still not as bad as someone I know who survived WWII concentration camps.
(for what it's worth - overtime without pay is allowed to IT workers in BC Labour code in Canada, as well as other rather unpleasant stuff. I think they wrote those exceptions for EA.. Generally though high rates of pay are assumed and cover for this)
Just the PRIVILEGE of working for a great company like APPLE should be honor enough, but they want PAY!
What is the world coming to! Time was when an employee would consider themselves lucky to pay $1000
a week to their employer for a job! Oh, wait that was Microsoft I guess...
Seriously, in most high tech companies being salaried is similar to slave labor. You are expected to be there 24/7 because you get "comp time" but in reality "comp time" is a total myth. Which would not be so bad except management will kill your 6 months of day and night labor in 30 seconds if the marketing department says to. I have seen it on numerous occasions.
Give me an hourly job anytime. It pays better in the long run.
Today if I had a job at Apple, I would be satisfied. There is more to life than what job you have. Sometimes it is important to wokl on something that improves the quality of life for people.
If worker's rights are what turns you on, become a union organizer. If creating technology that makes people happy gives you a thrill, do it. If helping people with their problems make you feel good, do that.
Which part of you is unhappy? If it is the part that wants to earn a good living to support your loved ones, look for a new job. Otherwise, do your work, worship per the religion of your choice, and be glad for what is working in your life. Sometimes we don't know when we have it made.
Go home, take your dyslexia or add/adhd meds, ok? And, by the way - Care to show us your PHD in English (oh, that's right - you're just another 'slashdot wannabe professor of english) or proof of your expertise as a professional editor for a noted written publication in print? Oh, you don't do that for a living either now, do you? Hey, wannabe editor/grammar and spelling nazi - a newsflash for you: Posting on forums is not anybody's last will & testament, nor is it legal documentation, so is "perfect english" (for whatever that means, purely a relative term) required here? No. Yes, I suppose we should all listen to you, the quack/sidewalk surgeon, who has no professional experience on either grounds via a PHD in English or professional experience for critiquing others speech or writing patterns. Not that it'd matter, because odds are, I have been speaking and writing this language longer than you've been alive, anyway. Also, lastly in closing: You're also 'off topic' fool - this is a forums on computers & a topic regarding they also, correct? So, what use is your bullshit about writing dork? Answer = none.
AC certainly got a rise out of the manager who does nothing but send 50 emails a day and hold useless meetings wasting everyone's time by reporting to said incompetent moron who can't even do the job himself. There is nothing let getting a 'defensive reaction' from these blatant fakes in management in the field of computers. Not all of them are, but the majority, is. Company owners out there, want to profit? Get rid of these 6-8 figure salaried frat boys in management who have never done the job themselves. Payroll is, after all, the easiest cost to control and the useless no skills managers are the biggest offenders of all in this capacity. Paying for dead weight that has zero production value? Bad business.
and there was a verdict against them. I worked there for almost 10 years and several of those years were covered by the agreement. I received a notice in the mail probably 5 years after I left Citi stating that I was part of the class and would be awarded something like ~$800. Wow.
I thought the suit was ridiculous as being a professional in IT this comes with the territory. I also couldn't imagine how that would complicate my taxes for those years with my paltry award being quickly eaten up by my accountant to refile. I tore up the letter.
The attorney's made out and the lead plaintiff got a fairly substantial award, not enough to retire on, but other than that it was a waste of time and effort. . .IMNSHO
My firefox crashed while posting this comment. Had to fire up IE...
They're turning kids into slaves... They're turning kids into slaves, just to make cheaper sneakers. Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got little kid slaves making them
What are your overheads?
Where are the vicious digs at Apple users' sexuality and lifestyles? Where are the drooling Apple fanboys defending slavery?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Apple will lose, and move to Dubai where unions are illegal and which has no extradition arrangements with the U.S. of A. Americans will ignore the slap in the face and continue to buy things Apple because "They're just tooo kewl, dude!" and/or "At least they're not Microsoft!".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The parent writes:
Yes. I endured an unpaid-OT situation for two years at a large technology company on the West Coast. 75, 80, 100 hours a week were the team norm. I don't think anyone on the team did less than a 55 hour week unless they were out sick, and even then, you could be out sick for a couple days of your 6-7 day work week and still bank 55 hours easily, yet be forced to count your missing days as sick leave.
For a long time, you hang in there with the mindset of, "Oh, I just need to figure out how to do this faster." Eventually you realize you've optimized the hell out of your work, and you're still needing to work virtually two weeks worth of hours every week to get it all done because of understaffing and because of the natural decrease in productivity that occurs when forced to do this for months on end. You make this point to management. They shrug and say it's your problem to solve, and that your workload is appropriate, because look, your peers are all doing the same amount of work and not complaining. You point out that most peers have only been on the job 6-12 months and you've done it for 2 years and are thus more tired and less able to do the 80 hour weeks. Again, it's not management's problem, even if they won't let you move to a different department because they're so desperate for people to do the long hours of low-intrinsic-reward, low-skill work your job turned into following a management change. You want to go to an training class? You've met your quota for the week, right? Oh, it's a 5-day class? So sorry... unless you can find some way to meet your quota, I guess that means you can't attend.
Why not leave? For the first year I did this work, I was well rewarded with deferred compensation by way of options that will vest in 2.5 more years and which are already in the money to the tune of $130K. I'd be leaving that on the table if I left before they vest. I could match my base salary elsewhere, perhaps with a 10% premium. It's that extra deferred compensation that I can't match nearly as easily, that makes the decision to leave less straightforward. Yes, I realize there's a chance the options will be worth less in 2.5 years, but also a chance that they will be worth even more.
So I decided that I'd strip my hours down to 8-9 hour days, endure whatever complaining I have to endure as a result of doing a fair work week but no more except for rare occasions, finish out my time there while doing other things like perhaps initial work on a startup after hours, cash out in 12/2010, and, errrhmmm.... PROFIT!
No hard feelings, and no guilt, either. Capitalism at work, on both sides. And it got funny about six months into it when my coworkers began to tire as well, realized the same things I'd realized, and adjusted their work hours accordingly. Management screamed and cried in desperation about required things that weren't getting done, and as a team we looked back and said.... "You haven't been able to convince your managers to allocate you more techs by telling them that these hours are killing an entire team? So sorry... unless you can find some way to come up with that staff, I guess that means...".
I'm far from the first person at the company who's ever been in the situation and done exactly the same thing, and obviously I'm not the last, either. It's common enough that there's internal jargon for it.
... to send these jobs to India and China.
frog_strat said:
"At Will status can be accidentally surrendered by the employer though, and is part of the reason there are so many successful termination cases."
Can you tell me more about how at-will status can be surrendered by an employer?
Thanks
On an empathetic level I understand people get upset when they feel like they're being taken advantage of. I really understand how a person can be nickled and dimed to death and feel that they should be compensated. But one of the harsh realities of globalization is that jobs are a sellers market. How long could it take to do that piddly crap they mentioned? 15 minutes? Hell I'd invest 15 minutes of my own time to secure my position - especially as well as Apple pays. Keep it up and your job starts looking like a candidate for outsourcing - make it someone elses headache and you make shareholders happy because you're cutting costs. Put it in perspective people - I'll guarantee that most folks piddle away significant amounts of time daily - I'd call a few minutes a day to my employer time well spent. IMHO pretty dumb to bite the hand that feeds when the economy is taking a shit. Facts are they could leave except (a)the job pays well (b) there's very few other jobs paying as well (c)they actually like working there and (d)current policy doesn't offend them enough they feel quitting is an option. Instead they allow a couple of malcontents to convince them to join a holy crusade that only benefits lawyers and pisses off their employer. Yeah - real bright. Go ahead mod me troll or flamebait - I make my own karma.
If you dont like it and you are not forced to go to work use your degree to get s better job
Maybe Steve Jobs should change his name to Steve Slaves.
Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Japanese treat their employees far better than US workers, right? Cradle to grave, right?
So the cost to the company per worker in Japan is higher than it is in the USA, GM is on the verge of bankruptcy and Toyota is doing fine, but somehow this is the fault of the expensive worker benefits in the USA? This doesn't make sense to me.
I wonder if part of it is mismanagement, but part of it has to be healthcare costs. They've gone through the roof in the US since 2000 or so. Wish I could find a source for this, but I remember reading somewhere that GM spends more on health care costs than on steel.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
To a moron or brain damaged idiot his post would be unintelligible only. That obviously includes clueless managers who have no ground in this science also. You must be management imho.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
News for nerds not news for smart people there is a big difference.
How much MORE proof do we need that Apple is realy an EVIL company? Just look at their FALSE advertising left and right. You don't need a class action lawsuit to fully appreciate just how nasty a company Apple is.
"64K is enough" Steve Jobs
Think different
"./ Similar comment already made. Try to be more original ... "
Great minds
Think alike?
That can't be possible!
Apple is the best company in the USA. Their employees should be proud of working there.