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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."
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...
Damn right, they are 'Resources' not Slaves.
They Live, We Sleep
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.
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.
... 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
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?
it's mostly because of tariffs, not because of the unions.
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Blaming the union != Blaming the workers
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
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.
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).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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?
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.
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.
Educators are typically salaried, no?