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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
It's their Jobs.
Actually the page was not available 30 minutes ago..not that I am implying the someone else would want that page taken down... Ok yes I am implying it strongly!
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.
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.
"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.
It never ceases to amaze me that any sites get slashdotted considering how obvious it is that very few posters ever RTFA, let alone the previous comments to a story...
In this case I guess it's all the /. Apple fanboyz keeping the site down. It's a conspiracy, you mark my words.
simon
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!
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 Just Works.(TM)
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."
...and not loving it.
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 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
I would like to read the article.
I'm sorry, could you rephrase that? I'm not sure I quite grasp what you mean.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
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
He'd say, you don't need to get paid. I agree. Steve Jobs agrees. Where's the problem?
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"
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.
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!
Didn't they do this as the result of import limits?
That could very well be true also. I live a county or two over from the BMW plant here in South Carolina, a plant that is being doubled in size curently, and also doubling it's workforce. BMW was quoted in the paper saying it was cheaper for them to make the cars here and ship them to Germany and the rest of the EU mostly due to the weak dollar. I'm sure there are a million other reasons, but that was their statement.
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
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.
Computer programmers, systems administrators, computer analysts, and engineers are on the "exempt" list.
As a rule, the IT profession gets screwed by the "exempt" status. We're "professionals", yet we don't have the same level of autonomy as most of the "professional" classes (lawyers, doctors, etc).
Working an occasional 60-hour week when things are rough / deadlines are slipping is expected in this business. Working 60 to 80-hour weeks all the time is not only abusive, it's counterproductive. There's only so much brainpower one can engage: and I'd bet that the vast majority of that 60-hour week is unproductive time anyway.
I come from a farming family, and the "working sun-up to after sundown" bit is pure BS.
For about six weeks, yes, my aunt and uncle work from 5 am to around 6 pm: about four weeks in the beginning of the season and about two around harvest time. The remainder of the year they probably work an average 8 hour day just like everybody else. In winter, there's a couple of weeks that they aren't doing anything and often take a vacation.
There's nothing wrong with the American work ethic. It's boneheads like you that live to work, not work to live, that need to figure it out. Most Europeans don't work nearly as many hours as the average American in the same job.. and who's currency is getting trashed right now?
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
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
Auto unions also tend to produce employees who are complacent at best. They know they are protected by the union and do crappy work as a whole.
Toyota is smart, because keeping unions out also increases their ability to ensure quality exists.
Compare GM cars with Toyota, and the results should be obvious.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
I worked as a contractor at Chrysler and maintained their driving simulator. There was a union guy in the lab that was responsible for moving stuff around (I'd get fired if I moved a PC, I had to ask him to do it). Since we weren't moving stuff around much, he spent most of the day sleeping. Every once and a while the mock-up shop needed him to build a 1-1 scale car out of wood. It would take him a few days to build an exact replica of a new vehicle. The work he did (does?) was amazing.
Long story short: people with great potential and skills are sitting around doing nothing.
Why would anyone work over without compensation? No one goes to their daily job because they like to, or because they want to help out the company. Thinking that you're doing so and will see some magical return in good grace is ridiculous. No manager or CEO would ever go out of their way to help you, so you shouldn't go out of your way to help them.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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.
See here: http://macinations.net/news/autonomy.html
My web domain.
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.
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;
On Slashdot, this goes without saying...
One man's constant is another man's variable.
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!
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
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").
... we CAN say "precedent".
:o)
Not quite the same thing.
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 $25/hr.
My team of 5 supported hundreds of Enterprise NeXT customers daily and we had tens of thousands of logs to maintain, edit, open, cross-reference, include changes and close, while walking joe blow developer through a redeployment, Netinfo redesign of master/slave relationships, to EOF database models, to checking over Openstep code, system installs of 4 architectures, et.al BEFORE we escalated it to Engineering proper [AppKit, FoundationKit, WOF, etc]
I have a suggestion: find a competitive environment that is comparable to Apple Call Centers and leave if you think it's better, or improve your technology skills and network at Apple's main campus to see if there are job openings you'd be a fit. Opportunity exists if you can see beyond the Call Center job.
the complaint can be found here: http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/casdce/3:2008cv01410/276150/1/
Where are the vicious digs at Apple users' sexuality and lifestyles? Where are the drooling Apple fanboys defending slavery?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, let's see. The so-called "death threats" against you are not death threats at all. A couple of them are asking you to commit suicide, another is even stating you will eventually self destruct. A "death threat" is where someone threatens to kill someone else. None of the comments had such wording or even remotely resembling the wording.
Also, those you call Microsoft or "M$" lovers and haters of free software are nothing of the sort. It is possible to like both closed source and open source software. Just because someone doesn't use M$, Micro$haft, or Windoze doesn't mean they hate open source or Linux. One example you gave was Keith Russell. If he hated open-source software and loved Microsoft as you claim, then he wouldn't be making statements like "This is one of the things that will allow Linux, and FOSS in general, to win in the long term. The multitude of voices and opinions tend to be self-correcting, with benelovent dictators like Linus Torvalds keeping the focus on building up their own products, not tearing down the opposition."1 or "I don't think Microsoft cares that Blu-Ray is Sony's standard, just that it's not Microsoft's standard."
There is no Microsoft conspiracy against you. The reason you have been modded down is because you use "M$" and "Windoze" Microsoft and Windows, which is just as childish as using "Linsux" and "Open Sores" when describing "GNU/Linux" and "Open Source" There are many people on Slashdot who speak against Microsoft and still get modded up. If it were a conspiracy then anyone speaking against Microsoft would be modded down on the spot.
As for Apple, if this is true then a lawsuit is the least of their worries. Apple should worry more about their customers leaving them. Microsoft does at least treats their employees well, homosexuals included.3456 Apple should be treating their employees with more respect.
Sources :
1 - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=197140&cid=16158708
2 - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=497526&cid=22846284
3 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3128913
4 - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/346431_antiochmsft08.html
5 - http://www.vault.com/survey/employee/Microsoft-Corporation-EMPLOYEER-3726.html
6 - http://www.brianblog.com/archives/2005_05.html