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Apple Retailer Facing Class Action Suit Over Employee Bag Checks
aitikin writes "Former Apple employees say the company requires workers to stand around without pay for up to 30 minutes a day while waiting for managers to search their bags for stolen merchandise."
The filing. It looks pretty illegal: mandatory unpaid checks of personal belongings before and after work and all breaks.
hiring people to work in your store who can't afford the product. Ford paid his workers well so they could afford his card. Apple store has to search it's workers to prevent theft. Maybe if they paid them better they wouldn't have to worry about this.
If Apple's actions are being described correctly, that's time that clearly belongs to be on the clock.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No sympathy whatsoever.
As an airline pilot I do not get paid while I wait in line and am checked by the TSA. I do not get paid while I wait in line for customs. I do not get paid while I get the flight paperwork and verify it is safe and legal. I do not get paid while preparing and inspecting the airplane for flight. I do not get paid while I wait for everyone to get on the plane and coordinate with gate, ramp, fuel, maintenance and catering to ensure an on-time departure.
It's about that Apple "Experience"........
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I don't even see how such a thing is legal..
i think the whole point is that it is not legal
not sure when that happened, but about seven years ago i was a security guard and we werent paid for the time we werent working our station. approximately thirty minutes both before and after work spent gearing up, signing in/out and unloading our firearm, and driving to/from the site to relieve the previous team was free time to the company. we had a three-week paid training period prior to working, and frequently were let out early. site supervisor kept bringing that up, said that things 'evened out'.
after i had moved onto another job, someone filed a class-action lawsuit against the company (alaska native corporation) and i received nearly $1000 compensation (lawyers got over half of it -but not bad for something i didnt have to go to bat for).
though mind that if it is indeed illegal to file a class action suit if prohibited by your corporate overlord, it is still legal to file a complaint, compile evidence to demonstrate the problem persists, and file your own lawsuit. someone had to go through those steps for the class action suit, its not unreasonable (though admittedly a huge PITA) to do it oneself. for the record, i think its inane to disallow class action suits when individual suits are allowed.
As an airline pilot, you've (well, your union, on your behalf) negotiated a contract with the airline where your pay is based on getting the plane where it needs to go, and you are paid for all activities necessary to accomplish the task for which you are paid for.
Also known as, AIRLINE PILOTS ARE NOT HOURLY EMPLOYEES.
I am sure that, once you add up all the time you spend on all of your job-related activities, your wage + time and a half for hours over 40 per week, greatly exceeds the minimum wage.
Just like every other salaried employee who doesn't make any more money when it's crunch time and you have to pull 10-12 hour days to get shit done. It's called a job description, and being paid for the job (get plane from A to B) instead of the time (you were in airports/planes from 9 AM to 8 PM.)
If you don't like the terms of your contract, either renegotiate it so you are paid by the hour instead of by the trip (or flight hour), or work somewhere else. I hear Apple stores are hiring.
Note that Apple stores probably don't have benefits like medical, dental, or free flights on any domestic carrier on a space-available basis, and your hourly wage will plummet vs. your flight-hour wage, but at least you'll get a slight increase on your paycheck if customs takes a little longer to clear!
paintball
2/3rds of loss in retail is from employee theft. At a place like Apple outlets, where the products are small, expensive, and easily turned over for cash to friends or pawn shops, I'd imagine it's even higher. Not that this fact excuses forcing unpaid overtime on your workers, but I'm not surprised they're doing bag checks.
The bag check isn't the problem.
Employers reserve that right even in countries with real employer protection. What isn't Kosher is the fact they have to do it unpaid. If an employer wants to screen you on your way out that time must be paid for by the employer.
Same for when an employee takes a break. In retail environments your breaks are timed (I've even heard they are even unpaid in the US), so a screening should not be permitted to detract from that time.
I work in a secure facility, I clock on from the first the moment I enter the building. Even if it takes me 5 minutes to get to my desk. Then again I work in a country that punishes employers for taking advantage of employees.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I don't think they should be searching or banning the bags, but it would've been easier from their standpoint to just ban them. Their policy exposes them to unneeded legal risk.
the policy is so that the "managers" can feel like bigshots. it's not about easy. that's why they went along with it despite it being illegal.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Depending on where the Apple store is relative to your home/other jobs/schooling, employees might not relish the thought of going all the way to work and back every day with nothing but the contents of their pockets and wearing their work outfit.
They don't need to ban bringing the bag to work, just ban bringing it into the inventory control area. They could provide a locker room where people can lock up their bag before their shift, outside the inventory control point (the place where they were inspecting the bags). This is common practice at plenty of retailers, warehouses, and manufacturers. Try this: Go to Walmart and walk around. Okay, now how many employees do you see walking around the store with backpacks, purses etc? Answer: zero. They are in the locker room.
At the West Hollywood Best Buy I saw employees being visually inspected by a manager as they exited the store single file after closing. At a Culver City Best Buy one of the employees told me they get searched. I didn't believe him until I saw it being done at another location. Pretty humiliating. Hopefully the kids who work there now realize this is not the type of job you want to do long term.
WTF is a VAR? GIHA (God I Hate Acronyms...)
Tomorrow is another day...
May I cordially ask which country is it? (Germany is my 1st bet...)
From his posting history I'd say Australia is a safe bet - but same here in Norway. Currently they don't have a wall clock where I work so I'm awarded five minutes on the online check-in to compensate me for the time to take the elevator, get to my office, log in to my computer and sign in. So if I check in at 8:05 AM wall time, it registers as if I arrived at 8 AM sharp. First place I've worked that actually have a clock system though, usually I've just filled out time sheets manually.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Jan Wong
There were many social issues discussed in this series of articles, the majority of which I didn't agree with as framed. One issue she pointed out was that these barely-literate low-income scullery-scrubs few of whom had driver's licences were expected to haul vacuum cleaners through the Toronto metro system between jobs that were not as proximal as a modern UPS delivery route.
Brown Down: UPS Drivers Vs. The UPS Algorithm
No, the scheduling algorithm employed by the scullery-scrub dispatch office involved chewing up small bits of paper and spitting them at a map, because they were getting away with NOT PAYING for the delivery of vacuum cleaners by their downtrodden and raw-fingered cleaning staff. Many of these barely-solvent workers were putting in eight hour on job sites, plus another four hours (unpaid) moving between job sites, toting equipment that wasn't even their own for less than the cost of delivering the equipment by any other business method.
Jan Wong could have gone to war over a clear violation of labour fairness, but she instead decided to do a lot of public hang-wringing over systemic issues unlikely to ever change.
It's Apple's job to politely inform their store managers that this violates accepted labour practice and to put an end to it as thoroughly as they do with unwelcome rumours about unfinished products.
I once spoke to an ex IBM employee in the early 1980s who said he left IBM because he could get anything done. His department was under such tight security that it took him an hour to get to his desk in the morning and another hour to leave it in the afternoon. I think part of that was fetching his work product from a secure area and returning it there again with an inspection. He was well paid for the whole ordeal, until it finally drove him nuts.
The rule in a democratic salary market is that time is money. Even if the money is too small to spit at from the perspective of the person writing the cheques.
An anecdote I liked from that series was the incident(s) where business owners tried to bully her out of using street parking in front of their stores (which they would prefer to see used by customers) on the presumption that she was timid and uneducated. It almost blew her cover confessing she knew how to drive in the hiring interview. I think she had to tell some huge sob story to make her desperation believable to take such a job as a person who could hold down a driver's licence.
This is just a story about 2 stores, and my guess is that it's about paranoid managers who have lost stock in the past. No news here.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
May I cordially ask which country is it? (Germany is my 1st bet...)
From his posting history I'd say Australia is a safe bet - but same here in Norway. Currently they don't have a wall clock where I work so I'm awarded five minutes on the online check-in to compensate me for the time to take the elevator, get to my office, log in to my computer and sign in. So if I check in at 8:05 AM wall time, it registers as if I arrived at 8 AM sharp. First place I've worked that actually have a clock system though, usually I've just filled out time sheets manually.
Yep, Australia.
Not quite as good as Norway when it comes to workers rights.
I'm covered by an agreement that specifies if I work, I get paid (but my employer is a bit of a special case). Other Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA) in Oz give you time off in lieu rather than overtime pay but compensation for time worked is enshrined in law here. Some EBA's are abusive even though the courts crack down on it as much as they can.
Even though we get clocked by the security system, we still do timesheets to account for when we take breaks (which are also paid).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Try this: Go to Walmart and walk around. Okay, now how many employees do you see walking around the store with backpacks, purses etc? Answer: zero. They are in the locker room.
Nice try. The Wal-Mart employees generally have to walk through the entire store to the back to clock in. The area where the receiving docks are is where the break room and employee lockers are. Yes, they keep their purses/backpacks/lunchboxes in a locker while working, but they could also slip things into these bags in the store while on their way back, or take merchandise from the storage racks in back area by the receiving docks, then walk out at the end of the day with their bags on arm.
For your idea to work the store has to have a separate employee entrance/exit outside the inventory control area. And you'll need someone to guard the door between the inventory control area and the employee area to make sure bags or merchandise to not cross between the two.
Similar protections exist in the UK; a call centre had such shitty software it could take 20 minutes for the tracking software to load, and so they made people go in 20minutes before work in order to log on. They were taken to court over this and lost.
Look at the YMCA personal trainers, ask them about their "mandatory" volunteering they do each week
.
"But isn't the YMCA a charity you ask?" Why yes and no. The YMCA that gives aid to the homeless and such sure but the gym portion is a whoooole different entity.
I knew an accountant who used to audit them and trust me they knew how to work the system and what was right and what was wrong.
if any of us complain about the abusive, slave-like working conditions, they threaten to send us to work in an Apple store.
(Disclaimer: This is a joke. I do not work at Foxconn.
Shut up you ignorant lying moron.
sales are plummeting
It's seen a _small_ sales dip in _some_ categories but nothing close to "plummeting". And if you dare quote the iPad numbers, you will betray how daft you are. It's a channel adjustment - the actual sell through numbers only dropped 3% which is _EASILY_ attributable to people knowing a new iPad is on the horizon and choosing to wait before buying and if you consider a 3% dip "plummeting" then you are a moron.
paying literally zero tax
Apple paid more corporate taxes than ANY OTHER AMERICAN COMPANY! Now, I don't know what your definition of "literally zero" is but when they paid more than anyone else, that would suggest they did not, in fact, pay "literally zero". Unless every other corporation got money back, Apple did not LITERALLY pay ZERO taxes.
I'm not going to pick apart any more of your post because you're a lying moron and not worth my time. Anyone who claims Apple is paying "literally zero tax" is flat out a liar.
How does ignorant lying bullshit like this get modded up?
Feel free to flame; feel free to mod me troll, but I'm sick of flat out bullshit ignorant posts like this being modded "Informative". I've been coming to Slashdot for many years to learn new things about tech and geek subjects but this is getting pathetic. Hate Apple, if you want, but at least base it vaguely on facts rather than complete and total bullshit lies.
1) How much money did Apple fork over to the US government in taxes? I'm guessing that number is not-zero.
So the claim that Apple paid literally zero in taxes is a lie. They paid LITERALLY billions of dollars in taxes. Last I checked, "billions" does not equal "literally zero". They, in fact, paid MORE than any other American company.
2) What other companies make use of the Ireland tax situation? But let's focus on Apple, right? Apple generates page views and nobody cares about every other company that's doing the same thing. Also, you know IT'S LEGAL!
Do you not take advantage of tax deductions that are available to you come tax time? Why is it wrong when a company works WITHIN the law to minimize their tax burden but its ok for an individual to do so?
Regardless of point 2, point 1 clearly shows that the claim that Apple literally paid zero taxes is a lie. Unless you consider billions of dollars to equal literally zero.
Dubious Officer of Unpaid Checking and Harassment Executive - Bags
Back in the day I had a roommate that worked at a Baskin Robins that was breaking all kinds of employment rules. For example they were paid minimum wage but if the cash in the drawer didn't match up to what he thought it should, he'd take it out of their pay. Well employment law was the only thing he was breaking, I called the corporate office and it turned out that they had a rule that you had to pay more than minimum wage anyhow. You find that with chains sometimes, they have internal wage rules higher than the legal minimum.
However he got away with it forever because none of his employees (including my roommate) would turn him in. I tried to convince her to, to let the corporate office and the state attorney know, but she wouldn't.