There has been a wave of these class action lawsuits in California, and employers have been forced to take a more literal interpretation of lunch breaks and oth

There has been a wave of these class action lawsuits in California, and employers have been forced to take a more literal interpretation of lunch breaks and other breaks for hourly workers. Across a large organization, you can't handle break time informally any more ("just catch a break when things slow down") because, unless breaks are more rigorously enforced, some hourly worker will file a class action suit that will pull in every hourly worker at the employer. This applies whether it's a sweatshop or business support staff at a tech employer. This has had all kinds of effects, some salutary, and many just annoying. For instance, very junior tech staff (who are hourly workers) are paid for airplane travel outside of work hours, while salaried staff are not. Promotions from hourly to salaried now involve considerably more regulation. Without knowing more about the specific practices, we can't say if Apple was just a part of that wave, or if there was some actual exploitation going on. Given that the article has several click baity hooks, and no specific facts about labor exploitation, I'm doubtful there is a major problem here.