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."

Comments

No, *THESE* are slaves

[elrous0]

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.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[oyenstikker]

Honda, Toyota, and Subaru seem happy to build cars in the US.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[Notquitecajun]

Same with BMW. Great irony - it's cheaper for foreign auto makers to assemble here in the USA than it is for the Big Three...mostly because of overbearing union activity. The American auto industry needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. It's probably going to happen with one of the new electric car manufacturers, but there's room here for a new American auto company if someone wants to risk the billions+ $$ investment to do it from scratch.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[KeepQuiet]

.... their lives (and the lives of their families) are appreciably BETTER - not worse - due to Apple's contractor's factory.

The point you make is the exact point all corporations make in order to exploit cheap foreign labor. "Well, their lives sucked, so let us pay them peanuts, then they must be happy"

Also it is beyond my understanding that someone tells us that what is being done is good for them without seeing there, talking to anyone working there. Don't you think it is way too arrogant to "know" what is good for them?

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[Anonymous Coward]

it's cheaper for foreign auto makers to assemble here in the USA than it is for the Big Three...mostly because of overbearing union activity

Let me call a big BULLS%#T on that. First, Germany has much more powerful employee bargaining and safeguards and other pro-union policies and unions than the US does.

Second, although the big three love to blame all their problems on the unions, they've found enough cash to buy out most of the other automakers on the planet (volvo, saab, jaguar, subaru, range rover ... to name just a few). Yet they haven't found the cash to refit and retool their american factories. They don't bother with those factories, because they can always promise investors short-term profits by shutting down a few factories and putting 10s of thousands of Americans out of work, knowing that in a few months or a year they'll be able to hire (some) again when production picks up.

Meanwhile, the *newly built* foreign carmakers' factories can produce more vehicles more efficiently with greater quality control. With (surprise) those same American workers.

But no, please, blame the workers. It's clearly all their fault.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[jacquesm]

it's mostly because of tariffs, not because of the unions.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[Gewalt]

Blaming the union != Blaming the workers

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[nicklott]

No, they assemble in the US because of the anti-competitive proctectionist tariffs in place on auto imports to the US. It costs them the same as the big three, it's just that they are better and more efficiently run companies. All this bullshit about union costs dragging them down is a smokescreen; Germany is one of the most highly unionized countries in the world with astronomical rates of tax, yet BMW seem to manage ok.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[BasharTeg]

Wow, I've made some generalizations in my time, but to make a billion person generalization, that's amazing.

I know your 80 year old friend has seen a lot of years, but I highly doubt with 1 billion people, he has seen nearly enough of the quality of life of at the very least hundreds of millions of Chinese who are drinking water poisoned by industry and starving because their natural food sources like fish are being wiped out.

On top of that, working 15 hours a day for peanuts is what it is. There's no amount of "relative" standard you can apply to it to spin it to sound not so bad.

This kind of #1 economy apologism is the type of disgusting crap you see from Bill O'Reilly. "They don't need more than a couple dollars a day. They don't know any better. They have enough money to buy a bowl of rice and they're happy." The fact that someone has meager goals because they live in a poor situation isn't a justification for the broad statements that presume that they're satisified and happy with their quality of life.

Now personally I believe this is China's problem to deal with internally and we have our own domestic poor that we're not handling that well, but to try to escape any moral association with taking advantage of disgusting labor conditions and wages by making uninformed generalizations and excuses about how self-limiting they are...

I think the argument is ridiculous, the points brought up are illogical and unsupported, and generally the whole effort to whitewash the situation turns my stomach.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[MightyYar]

Wait, you not going to suddenly go all inconsistent and say that's totally different are you?

That's totally disingenuous. The Chinese subsistence farmers leave on their own accord (actually have to be kept out of the cities by force). African slaves were rounded up, chained up, and sold. Chinese factory workers can go back to their families on the farm, or can change jobs (and frequently do) as they are not indentured or bound to their employer. Slaves could not go anywhere.

There are certainly elements of the Chinese government's policy that I think infringe on human rights - but to call it slavery is frankly disgusting, since there ARE people living as slaves today (mostly in the sex trade IIRC).

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[nine-times]

while we think working 15 hour days is ridiculous, let's keep in mind that a lot of people in China pray for any employment... remember that China's population is measured in BILLIONS- there's just not enough work to go around.

If there's not enough work to go around, then how come people have to work 15 hours a day to do it?

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[darkmeridian]

Also it is beyond my understanding that someone tells us that what is being done is good for them without seeing there, talking to anyone working there. Don't you think it is way too arrogant to "know" what is good for them?

All I have to know is that the sweatshop workers decided, on their own free will, to go and work for Apple under those conditions to conclude that this is better for them than the alternatives. I am not arrogant enough to think I know better than they do what's good for them. Note that they might hate their job, but it's better than the alternatives.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[orasio]

Personally I have no respect for unions anymore since they are actively trying to unionize illegal workers. The union was supposed to be about protecting American jobs, not encouraging those who are breaking the law. Now it's all about the $$$.

Unions are about protecting workers, as people.
Solidarity with your fellow worker doesn't necessarily end at the border, at least not for all of us. The whole idea of unionizing is to avoid exploited workers. Illegal immigrants are more vulnerable to that. In fact, their vulnerability is what makes them more interesting for employers.
If illegal immigrants were unionized, they would lose some of their appeal as slave workers, which could even have a beneficial effect for all workers.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[Snocone]

Witty, but not relevant to this situation.

What is actually relevant to this situation is the routine exposure of corruption among the recruiting process for these allegedly horrific conditions.

So, to connect your phrasing to reality,

"Why, my nigger paid the overseer under the table his entire family's life savings plus sold two of his daughters to get to work for me! Don't have to ask him nuttin' do ya?"

When there no longer are stories of that sort about how desperately people bribe anyone they can to get a chance at these allegedly horrific conditions, then perhaps there might be something to discuss.

In the meantime, the politest thing you can say about people who think there is a problem is that they are not familiar with the alternatives available to the workers, and they lack the basic grasp of economics that the only historically effective way to improve working conditions has been to reduce labor surplus, which is most effectively done by increasing number of jobs. (In a few cases restricting supply by unionization or its bastard cousin "professional certification" works too, yes, but simply growing the economy so jobs outpace workforce growth is much better as it does not restrict the freedom of individuals.)

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[porcupine8]

My dad (in his 40s) was a Pizza Hut delivery driver for seven or eight years. He recently had to quit, because his pay hadn't increased to cover the rise in gas prices and so he was barely making any money. And tips have gone down in recent years because places have started charging delivery fees - which DON'T go to the driver (or possibly 25c of the dollar does), but the customers assume it does and so don't tip as much or at all. Plenty of the people he worked with are NOT high school students making extra money for the weekend - many of them were people with families who are using PH as a second job in the evenings to make ends meet.

Delivery drivers have been working toward unionizing for a while now - I believe that there are now a few union Pizza Huts. Don't assume that these people are all teenagers who are trying to save up for a nicer car - many of them depended on this money and are now getting screwed over such that their jobs are barely profitable. Somewhat because of the public perceptions you've outlined in your post - not only that these jobs are only held by people who don't need the money, but also that you don't want your pizza to be a dollar more expensive, so the additional cost gets hidden in a "delivery fee" that winds up cutting into tips, so that even if they get a little of the increase it's more than balanced out by the lower tips. I'm not going to say for sure that they should be unionized, but I can see why they are dissatisfied and want to be treated better. They are fronting the money for their own gas, oil, and car repairs, while the pizza places don't care if their policies lead to lower tips.

Re:No, *THESE* are slaves

[DriedClexler]

To be fair to GM and Ford, they have a generation or two of union costs on them that the new Toyota and Honda ventures do not.

Let's put this in context. "A generation or two of union costs on them" does not just appear out of nowhere. The company and the union had to *agree* to it. The difference between the US and the Japanese union legacy costs is that the Japanese, by law, had to actually (heaven forbid!) fund the benefits in advance, not just expect superprofits to cover this completely expected cost when it comes due. The US companies did not. The money that they should logically have set aside to fund the benefits, was instead thrown off as bonuses and dividends.

Btw, when I checked my stock trading account, I looked up GM bonds, and the ones that mature in just *three years* from now, are trading at ~28% yields -- I wish I could link it. That's a HUGE risk premium, and it's probably due to the -$40 billion book value of the company. Yes, *negative* 40 billion when you factor in legacy obligations.

News...

[maztuhblastah]

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.

Re:News...

[ccguy]

Not properly dispensing overtime pay is not the same thing as slavery,

Yours is one of many posts saying the same thing (and getting +5 insightful).

Why are you guys focusing on bashing the headline instead on the actual problem, which is that highly skilled people are working over time for nothing?

This IS a serious problem because,
- It is so common in the industry that there aren't lots of alternatives.
- The more they work the more others (even in other countries) are forced to work.
- Quitting is not a serious option unless you are rich and work for sport.

Re:News...

[Alpha830RulZ]

instead on the actual problem, which is that highly skilled people are working over time for nothing

Let's start by convincing me that this is a problem. These highly skilled people are also highly paid. Overtime pay is important, I will assert, because low paid people deserve a fair wage for their time.

A software developer who makes a $90k salary doesn't quite fit the description. $90k is about $45/hour, if you work 40 hour weeks, and about $34 an hour if you average 50 hour weeks. $34 an hour is hardly starvation money. Whether this is a fair wage for their time is a matter of negotiation between the employee and the employer, in my opinion.

The lack of overtime compensation is not forcing people into poverty, and it's not even abuse. It's apparently a condition of the employment at Apple, that some people don't like. Fair enough - find another job that doesn't demand that level of work.

The right way to state this is that highly paid people are being tasked with work that takes more than 40 hours a week. They are complaining about that, and trying to use the government to renegotiate their salary. I suggest that they go move to France, where the government will help them do so. In the US, I'll be surprised if they succeed, because the laws in most states are pretty clear that professional work is generally excluded from requirements for overtime pay. Professional work is usually defined as that which requires a lengthy period of study to attain, such as accounting, medicine, and engineering.

Personally, I am a little disgusted with the whining attitude of the gen x'rs. I have worked hours over my career that make these claims look paltry by comparison. The result, over time, was that I advanced in my career, and made some significant money when our company went public. My parents did the same. My grandfather worked his ass off on a farm, and was dirt poor. The chinese are working their asses off for $50 a month.

If you all want civil service work conditions, go get a job working for the post office, and see how much fun that is. Develoment is hard, and to make a business of it sometimes means stretching your self. Toughen up and grow a sack. Or understand that you are relegating yourself to the group of workers that your managers will look at as being solely interested in what's in it for you, and therefore placing yourself on the list of those to jettison whenever cuts need to be made.

Slaves, eh?

[qoncept]

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.

Re:Slaves, eh?

[korbin_dallas]

Damn right, they are 'Resources' not Slaves.

He quit.

[jcr]

Nobody hunted him down and made him return to the job; he's not a slave, QED.

-jcr

Slavery?

[Anonymous Coward]

'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.

Overexaggerate Much?

[rsmith-mac]

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.

My Wife's A Teacher

[Illbay]

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."

Is everyone a freakin slave these days?

[MosesJones]

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.

Re:Queue the jokes, and something serious...

[ari_j]

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. Slavery and indentured servitude take away that choice. Capitalism doesn't suck. People bitching about their dream job not paying overtime sucks.

Re:Queue the jokes, and something serious...

[Notquitecajun]

Communism sucks worse. It's called working on a salary - the expectation is to do the job, and get paid for doing the job. Yeah, working for a big corporation can suck at times because to really get ahead there you have to do OYOT stuff, but that's something that society's most productive - and essential - members will ALWAYS do.

That being said, state law typically trumps any/all contract law - if the contract signed was illegal, then you're not held to it.

I don't get paid for showing up to work per hour. I get paid to work and do a job.

We're in America - we're free to fail, and I think that people don't like that sometimes - they felt they are owed for simply trying. You're not. Hence the complaints about stupid stuff like this where people FEEL "trapped" when they're not in it as much as they think they are. Successful people don't whine about their circumstances - they go out and try to change them.

Welcome to Corporate America

[UID30]

... 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.

Slaves

[whisper_jeff]

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...

Re:Cry me a river

[sesshomaru]

Well, you're a sucker then. (Either that or you are making so much money you expect to retire early.) Frankly I'm all for this suit, but actually I don't think anyone has to work that kind of job... but maybe people want to in order to work for a "sexy" company like Apple.

.

Don't misunderstand, I think it is very macho of you to give your labor away for free. Being taken advantage of by your bosses is the best way to prove that you are an IT god, after all. I'm sure that since you've taken care of your company in this way, they'll take care of you. Even if shipping your job someplace else or just eliminating it makes financial sense, I'm sure you'll be fine. After all, after all the loyalty and dedication you've shown, they'd never do that to you, would they?

Incidentally, iPods/iPhones? Worthless consumer junk, give me the cash not the overpriced trinket.

Re:Queue the jokes, and something serious...

[silentcoder]

Really ? According to an article I read (and please correct me if I'm wrong) the US is the ONLY industrialized nation where annual leave is not a legal requirement. Heck, most DEVELOPING countries have it as a requirement. 14 days a year in South Africa (and if you don't use them all, they have to pay you for it), a full month in Brazil, 2 months in Germany.
And the grand irony - legally protected annual leave has been proven to INCREASE corporate productivity (as much as any economic idea is ever proven anyways).

Re:pathetic

[TheLostSamurai]

Yes, living on only $100,000 a year in Silicon Valley is simply impossible. Except of course for the other 80 percent of the population not making $100,000 a year.

Re:What would Stallman say?

[cawpin]

And that's a big point for the lawsuit. That is flat out illegal. You can't require somebody to do something for work and not pay them.

Re:What would Stallman say?

[lpevey]

Educators are typically salaried, no?

Re:What would Stallman say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've taught and I've worked in a factory. Its obvious you have never worked in a factory if you think that is the easy-to-do job. Standing over a press machine in an non-air conditioned building for 12 hours a day is not easy, even if it is mentally challenging.

  Also, factory jobs are not exactly easy to come by these days.