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Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules
- cletus 7y agoGood. If the company makes you do something, it’s work.
- eru 7y agoIt's a bit more transparent, but won't make much of a difference to the bottom line in the long run: The actual work done won't change from the relabeling, and Apple can adjust the hourly wages to get roughly to the same level of total compensation as before. (Modulo boundary effects from America's love affair with minimum wage laws, should they kick in.)
- s1artibartfast 7y agoIt becomes a little more tricky when it is optional, as in this case. The only thing that gets searched is a bag if you choose to bring it to work. The simple solution for ape is to ban bags at work so nobody gets searched.
- markovbot 7y agoFrom the article: >Apple said it could prohibit employees from bringing any bags or personal Apple devices into its stores altogether but gave them that benefit. The California Supreme Court said a ban on any personal items would be “draconian.”
- jandrese 7y agoAnd simply not hire anybody who needs medication or pre-menopausal women?
- ampdepolymerase 7y agoIssue a clear company branded bag. This is actually a somewhat common practice in certain US schools for safety reasons.
- brunoTbear 7y agoContinuing the dystopian theme, I see.
- _ph_ 7y agoThe simple solution would be to have a locker room where people can leave their stuff they need, but don't want/can't bring into the shop.
- usrusr 7y agoBut that will only be the second cheapest solution as long as the problem can be made the employees' problem without paying them for it. This ruling won't make employers pay for absurd waiting times, it will give them that tiny nudge that second apparently need to find better solutions.
- tropdrop 7y agoI only wish this would carry to non-California locations and to the service industry in general - when I worked as a waiter in a Rocky Mountain West state, after ending a shift we were not allowed to leave the premises until rolling exactly 100 sets of silverware. If no silverware was available, we would also have to run them through the dishwasher 2-3 times. We additionally had to perform two other "closing" tasks (e.g. restocking a particular mini-fridge, wiping down floor). This is pretty standard in the restaurant industry - the only problem is that in this state, servers are paid $2.15/hour, with the assumption that they'll make the rest up to minimum wage by serving tables. Anyway, some nights it would take me 1.5-2 hours to leave (not atypical), and I would get a whopping $4 of pay for that time.
- greycol 7y agoDepending on state servers are supposed to be paid non-tipped rate for not tipped parts of work including training and meetings. Of course good luck getting that without being at willed for "unrelated" reasons.
- pests 7y agoI forget the details or where this applies but someone before on here has mentioned that restaurants are allowed to use a certain percentage of tipped workers time on non-tipable duties like those types of tasks. The usual caveat of minimum wage after tips would still apply.
- Mikeb85 7y agoIt's perfectly legal to require servers (making the server minimum wage) to do up to 1/4 of the shift doing things other than serving guests.
- ck425 7y agoThat sounds more like an issue with the tips system. It's one fo the worst things about visiting the USA, combined with taxes not being in the price that is.
- eigen 7y agoIn Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk [1], the US Supreme Court held that time spent by warehouse workers waiting to undergo and undergoing security screenings is not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act. [1] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/integrity-staffing-solutions-inc-v-busk/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/integrity-staffi...
- cryptonector 7y agoHere it was California law being interpreted by the California Supreme Court as requested by the U.S. 9th circuit Court of Appeals.
- pier25 7y agoIs this common in the US? (retail workers being searched)
- olliej 7y agoYeah - especially if there are products with a small form factor and high resale[1] value. Is not paying employees for time they're required to be present also common? Yes. More or less every store I am aware of. [1. edit, typo, I meant resale here, not retail]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- salehenrahman 7y agoI don't know about in the US, but in Canada, I used to work at Forever 21—a California-based retail chain—and you are required to go through a pat-down right before you leave the store. You'd have to look for a manager, and ask them to escort you to the front of the store, and have them pat you down.
- dickjocke 7y agoThats interesting, I worked at a Forever 21 in the US ten years ago. They policy was that they would "look" (really just glance into) bags, but never actually touch people.
- selectodude 7y agoThat’s surprising, if only because I’m not sure how you could steal more than $10 worth of stuff without a full garbage bag. Didn’t seem to help them. They filed for bankruptcy.
- anonymfus 7y ago> if only because I’m not sure how you could steal more than $10 worth of stuff without a full garbage bag. People who have an idea how to do it, please don't write it here, as it can lead to worsening of the situation for store workers.
- olliej 7y agoOmg, I still can't believe that was in any doubt. If you are required to be at work, then you should be paid for that time. Just because you aren't "working" does change that the business is requiring you to be there. If nothing else this should push them to make leaving work not take 20-45 minutes. WTF. How does anyone think it's acceptable to [funcitonally] detain people.
- reactspa 7y agoApple, one of the richest companies in the world: - thinks they're above the law - is cheapskate that doesn't want to pay it's lowest level workers equitably *while constantly virtue-signaling about equality and the environment.
- michaelhoffman 7y agoApple argues that it's not required because you aren't required to be searched, it's only if an employee freely chooses to use the ~~~privilege~~~ of taking your personal items to work that they are searched. You can always come to work with nothing and not be searched. I think this argument is BS and it looks like so did the California Supreme Court. Apple argues that this choice is of benefit only to the employees but without it I think they'd have a much harder time keeping employees.
- JohnFen 7y agoAs you say, Apple's argument is ludicrous on its face (as the court pointed out) because Apple also requires employees to wear special clothing at work, and are forbidden from wearing that clothing off-premises. So employees must carry that clothing to work with them. I suppose that doesn't mean that they have to put it in a container, but that's a real stretch of an argument that the court also rejected.
- sjwright 7y agoAnd that really hinges on who is responsible for laundering said uniforms. If the employee is responsible for laundering, it is ridiculous for Apple to expect employees to not bring a personal bag to work.
- whalesalad 7y agoSeriously?!? When I worked at Apple Retail it took all of 10 seconds for the security search. This was at one of the busiest stores in the nation and during the booming period of the iPhone 3/4. EDIT: Y'all are completely smokin me with these downvotes. I am not against this decision, I am just surprised that the issue grew to be this severe.
- mzs 7y ago>Employees are supposed to find a manager or security officer to do the searches after they clock out. Employees estimate that waiting for and undergoing the searches can take five to 20 minutes, or, on busiest days, up to 45 minutes.
- addicted 7y agoWell then they can pay for 10 seconds of work. If Apple is that efficient then this will cost them nothing and it’s a wonder why they fought it in court in the first place. At that efficiency a 100,000 workers would cost them 250 hrs a day. So Apple went to court to avoid paying $5000/day? They went to court to avoid paying people 5c more per day. Right. Clearly in many cases the Apple stores aren’t that efficient which is why this has come up in the first place.
- alain_gilbert 7y agolol, I guess apple shouldn't care too much about paying them for the 10 seconds then.
- ipqk 7y agoYeah, it's not like Apple stores have changed or become busier in the past 9 years.
- danso 7y agoI'd wager to bet that Apple's inventory is much more diverse and smaller (in physical size) compared to the iphone 3 days. I don't remember Apple having as many SKUs as they do now that are expensive and highly-wanted and very small, e.g. Apple Watch and Airpods.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoNote this is in California. At the US, level, 5 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Amazon did not have to pay its workers for the time spent waiting for screening. Excerpt from the NY Times article about that decision: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that a temp agency was not required to pay workers at Amazon warehouses for the time they spent waiting to go through a security screening at the end of the day. The workers say the process, meant to prevent theft, can take as long as 25 minutes. NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rules-against-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-ru... Non-paywalled version of above article http://archive.is/Az21a http://archive.is/Az21a EDIT: Added excerpt from the article about the US Supreme Court decision.
- egypturnash 7y agough, one more reason to add to the pile of reasons to not give my money to Amazon.
- kelnos 7y agoOr Apple, I guess? It's not like Apple is any better; they're only now going to do the right thing because a judge is telling them to do so.
- jkaplowitz 7y agoAnd probably 9nly in California, too.
- mzs 7y agomore context >…The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is now pending, asked the California Supreme Court to clarify whether state law requires compensation. … >A federal district court judge ruled in favor of Apple, deciding that workers had to prove they not only were restrained from leaving but that there was no way to avoid having personal items searched. >Apple said it could prohibit employees from bringing any bags or personal Apple devices into its stores altogether but gave them that benefit. The California Supreme Court said a ban on any personal items would be “draconian.”
- addicted 7y agoThis is horrible. They weren’t working. They were just being effectively imprisoned with the threat of losing their jobs. They shouldn’t be paid for that. /s
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- megous 7y ago"A federal district court judge ruled in favor of Apple, deciding that workers had to prove they not only were restrained from leaving but that there was no way to avoid having personal items searched." So workers that would not have a personal bag would avoid a search? You can take away stuff from the store by hiding it in your clothes, I guess unless you're working naked. How would anyone be able to avoid the search? Am I missing something?
- sterlind 7y agoI think Apple was only searching bags, not patting down their employees (likely out of fear of sexual harassment allegations than any principled restraint on Apple's part.)
- angry_octet 7y agoThere are some really terrible Federal judges. And they can be there until they die of old age.
- angry_octet 7y agoI don't know if y'all can't read or you're Republicans. I'm referring to the lower court who decided you could come to work naked.
- jrockway 7y ago> Employees are supposed to find a manager or security officer to do the searches after they clock out. Employees estimate that waiting for and undergoing the searches can take five to 20 minutes, or, on busiest days, up to 45 minutes. This also seems to be their process for picking up orders at the store. It's pure chaos, and I find it at least somewhat amusing that at least Apple treats their employees and customers identically.
- danso 7y agoReally? (this is more of a genuine huh than a rhetorical huh) I guess I have relatively low expectations as a customer, but my most recent experience was picking up a laptop fixed up by AppleCare and I had to wait about 5 minutes for people ahead of me, but an employee found a place for me to sit and wait, and directed the relevant laptop-service employee to me when he was available. It seemed like a reasonable in-store delay even though Apple was fully obligated to service my laptop under warranty (and had to ship it out for a few days to do so).
- hobs 7y agoIt depends greatly on your apple retail store location, many of them are fairly tight run little ships, but some (say my local fashion island location) seemingly are huge groups of people milling about - I waited 30+ minutes so that an equivalent of a retail store clerk would let me buy a computer I had no questions about.
- megablast 7y agoThey are all tight little ships until they get overrun with people. Just like everywhere.
- derefr 7y agoI would note that it's likely faster to buy the computer from the website/app while standing in the store, and then ask them to bring it out. They're "more free" to do the pure bringing-stuff-out, because they know they might have to budget 30 mins or more for a complex purchase with lots of hand-holding and transferring and stuff, while a bring-out is always going to be short. And, if you don't have your phone on you, you could buy a Mac using one of the demo Macs. I think that's almost part of the reason they're there, at this point—they certainly do prominently feature the Buy Now buttons on the kiosk modes they pop into.
- usrusr 7y agoThis is how you undermine employee loyalty to the point where they start stealing.
- sjwright 7y agoExactly this. I don't live in North America so perhaps there's different expectations there, but I'd be more worried about staff cohesion and loyalty than of occasional thefts. How should any employee take a company's concern about theft seriously when the same company is so brazenly committing theft of an employee's time?
- alkonaut 7y agoI have completely given up trying to understand the mentality that surrounds work in the US (At least service work).
- usrusr 7y agoPS: it only occurred to me now, the court might actually be doing Apple a favor by forcing them to avoid a penny-pincher mistake.
- CamperBob2 7y agoExactly. There's another link on the front page to a WWII-era field manual on how to damage morale and sabotage the enemy's production capacity. This policy could have come right out of its pages.
- sjwright 7y agoI wonder, do these security guards get searched at the end of their shifts?
- vageli 7y agoIsn't this at odds with the ruling in Amazon's favor about a similar issue? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-amazon-doesnt-have-to-pay-for-after-hours-time-in-security-lines/2014/12/09/05c67c0c-7fb9-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-c...
- malwarebytess 7y agoNo, not necessarily. Pretty narrow ruling. It depends on the facts of the cases.
- brlewis 7y agoThe facts look quite similar to me. I think the difference is law. The Amazon case was based on U.S. law and the Apple case on California law. In the Amazon case, the ruling said "These arguments are properly presented to the employer at the bargaining table, see 29 U. S. C. §254(b)(1), not to a court in an FLSA claim." EDIT: There's a thread about this farther down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322608
- hypersoar 7y agoThat case was under federal law. This one is under California law. The older case was decided on statutory, not Constitutional, grounds, and there was nothing in it precluding states from passing stronger laws.
- paulie_a 7y agoGood. The search is exclusively for the businesses benefit. The employee should be compensated for their time wasted. If they come in at 8 they should get paid from 8 on. Otherwise it is simply theft from the employee
- jaybeeayyy 7y agoPay up, Tim!
- diebeforei485 7y agoYeah, this ruling makes sense. They should be on the clock until they are allowed to walk out of the store.
- dghughes 7y agoThis reminds me of when I worked at a casino. I had to sign in my keys at the end of the night. My supervisor had the lock box keys and they got those keys from a Security officer. The supervisor was usually in the poker pit and couldn't leave. Other supervisors would be standing around talking about football and ignore me. I just stood there and waited making overtime while talking to the girls at the bar. The manger was so inept she couldn't get her staff to find five minutes to sign me out. Some business seem to see your time at work as being your normal state of being and your own personal time as "unwork". I go to work for eight hours for the money trading my time for your money. The other 75% of my time is mine it's not unworking it's normal personal life.
- mnm1 7y agoSo will they be forced to pay backpay to all the employees Apple stole from up to this point? It's unclear if retroactively enforced means backpay, but it should.
- londons_explore 7y agoWould it be pay at the hourly contracted rate, or pay to meet minimum wage when the extra hours are considered?
- mnm1 7y agoWhy would it be anything but the hourly contracted rate agreed in the employment contract? Anything else is a breach of contract just like not being paid at all is a breach of contract (which is also illegal but unenforced). What should happen is a penalty for the CEO. I'd like to see Cook spend a few weeks in jail, incommunicado because I'm sure this was done at his direction. The government will never do anything to hurt such a company's bottom line in a significant way, however. If a regular person steals fifty cents worth of merchandise from the Apple store all hell will rain down upon him, but if Cook steals millions from his employees, he's a great CEO.
- 8ytecoder 7y agoAs a thought experiment, what if companies are made to pay for commute time? How would that change the labour market? Would they hire local? Provide better transportation? Work with cities to reduce congestion? Encourage more remote work? Decide it's too expensive to hire workers and cut hours? Work towards more inclusive housing?
- ivalm 7y agoWhat happens if someone moves while at the job ? What happens if there is a traffic jam? What happens if the worker typically doesn't drive home directly after work (or doesn't come to work from home)? Etc....
- londons_explore 7y agoSign into work laptop. Then start driving to work. If there's a traffic jam, that's the employers problem. For 'going somewhere else after work', it wouldn't be officially allowed - you are still working till you arrive home. Obviously some workplaces could perhaps allow flexibility as a benefit.
- megablast 7y agoWow, your suggestions are insane.
- debt 7y agoThe executive team can trim a few million off their annual bonuses so the very low number of workers that commute far distances can be compensated for that time sitting in the car. Alas they can but they won’t and they’ll fight you in court so they don’t have to.
- ivalm 7y agoAverage commute looks roughly like ~1 hour/day [0]. For a company like Apple there are 137k employees [1] and ~250 work days/year so that's ~34M hours. Assuming hourly rate of $20/hour (since well paid employees like SWE are salaried and won't get extra pay) we get ~$680M/year extra payroll... Eh, I guess they could afford it, although my questions still stand. [0] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/average-commute-u-s-states-cities/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/average-commute-u-s-states-... [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/273439/number-of-employees-of-apple-since-2005/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273439/number-of-employe...
- skywhopper 7y agoGood lord. Why fight this? This is the obvious right thing to do. If it amounts to significant impact on costs, then they have failed to run their store’s operations well. Sheesh.
- t-writescode 7y agoMoney
- sbarre 7y agoThis also says they search their personal iPhones. What exactly are they searching for that someone could steal? Do they just mean checking serial# or something to make sure someone didn't swap their phone for a new phone? Or are they actually searching/examining the contents of the phone?
- angry_octet 7y agoJust that is their iPhone and not a brand new one from the store.
- smegger001 7y agoThat sounds to me like Apple retail employees need to start blatantly using Android phones.
- colejohnson66 7y agoMaybe examining the photos so photos of their internal software aren’t “leaked”
- sabujp 7y agoThis is how trillion dollar companies earning billions per year treat their employees. Disgusting. Why not tag devices that cannot leave the store using the same tags retailers use to prevent shoplifting?
- beambot 7y agoEAS tags are notoriously simple to bypass for insiders.
- sabujp 7y agoi'm sure there are simple enough solutions that can be put in place to prevent theft and reduce theft to a small # of items, something that apple takes into account in their pricing model anyways. Store security cams, etc can also help.
- londons_explore 7y agoApple could easily mark serial numbers of store devices and make sure they can't work anywhere outside the range of store wifi.
- RandallBrown 7y agoThey would simply disable the tags before leaving, like they do for items that customers have purchased.
- captain_qwark 7y agoThis kind of shit is why companies export labor to other countries. American workers are so expensive for so many reasons unrelated to the actual labor, and it's all because worker rights have moved from the realm of "what needs to be" to "what should be". Of course it would be ideal if your employer paid you for the time it took to search you after work, but this is a luxury. Sure Apple has the money to hire that next employee even with these additional costs, but they won't because they don't legally have to. We need to move away from demands like these to demands that matter, otherwise a lot of Americans will be unemployed because the costs unrelated to labor will make it financially unreasonable for Apple to employ more people.
- cma 7y ago> Sure Apple has the money to hire that next employee even with these additional costs, but they won't because they don't legally have to. This is about retail workers. Until they get telerobotic, outsourcing to get around local labor laws doesn't seem like a concern.
- captain_qwark 7y agoRead the rest of what I wrote. Of course they're not gonna outsource retail, but they will not hire as many people as they could if there were no costs of searching workers.
- cma 7y ago>Read the rest of what I wrote. [...] but they will not hire as many people as they could if there were no costs of searching workers. I did read it all. It is super confusing. And what you said was that Apple could hire them even with the costs of searching workers ("Sure Apple has the money to hire") but they won't because they don't have to ("but they won't because they don't legally have to"). Obviously any expense is going to change their decision calculus, but that seemed to be exactly what you weren't saying.
- na85 7y agoUgh, what an icky position to take. You're essentially arguing that workers should submit to whatever corporate dystopia the owner class can cook up, or else they'll simply find their jobs outsourced to countries where people don't have the luxury of organizing for collective action to improve labour conditions because they're too busy scraping to put food on the table.
- confidantlake 7y agoNever had any issues waiting at an apple store. I was thinking to myself while reading this wow people's experience is way more negative than my own. But it makes sense, if you have good but not extraordinary service you are unlikely to leave a comment. Most comments will come from those having poor service. Good ruling, pay the employees if you make them wait.
- krustyburger 7y agoI really didn’t think Apple would ever get into search.
- ackshually 7y agomade me smile
- justlexi93 7y agoEmployees are the ones most likely to steal - they know the system and they know how to sneak things out. Back in the good days I worked at a electronics store. The sh*t you saw getting snuck out in the trash or from the “defective product” cages was special
- johngalt 7y agoIf being searched is a task required by your employer, I don't see how that's any different than time spent doing any other task. This also seems like a good way to align incentives. If time spent on security is compensated time, then there is a baked-in need to make the process less onerous.
- ljm 7y agoThis is fair enough. You’re still on the clock if you need security to sign you off to leave.
- acollins1331 7y agoThis is the exact opposite ruling from a judge on the same thing with Amazon. Law is a joke.
- danans 7y agoSeems like Apple was probably selected for the class action suit due to being a prominent and hugely wealthy company (just like Google and Amazon with respective labor related activities targeting them). And that was a good strategy, because here we are discussing it. As a society with high and growing inequality the US is structured in a way that incentivizes retail theft, so the frequency of this kind of theft isn't going down anytime soon. The question is who should bear the cost of it. This has always been framed as an issue of immorality of retail workers, so the cost has borne by them in the form of lost time/wages or maltreatment by police or security services. This is of course a false and incomplete framing, because it's arguably more immoral for a company to steal time / wages from all workers in this case when the product theft is only committed by a few. What is the loss due to theft of a smartphone vs. the cost to the worker who will now double pay in lost wages and the time for extra child care caused by the delay in leaving work? Framed economically instead it's just the cost of doing business in our society, just as with credit card fraud. Going forward, it looks like it will be borne by the retailers and ultimately, their customers, which is far better than it being borne by workers.
- ganoushoreilly 7y agoThis isn't new though. In the late 90's I worked for Best Buy and somewhere in early 2k's I got a check for $1500 to compensate for hours lost due to these kinds of loss prevention processes. I'm surprised it took this long for this to happen.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MoZeus 7y agoWhy would Apple even waste their time arguing this? They're obviously wrong: change the policy and move on
- minikites 7y agoYou don't get to be the richest company in the world by paying your workers well.
- eru 7y agoGoogle and Microsoft are doing pretty well.
- google234123 7y agothey dont have a ton of low skill store employees
- eru 7y agoIndeed, agreed. There's lots we can say about why companies do or do not make money, but it's not as simple as: > You don't get to be the richest company in the world by paying your workers well.
- minikites 7y agoNeither of them are the richest companies in the world.
- eru 7y agoExactly who is on top depends on how you define that. Judging by eg Enterprise Value is a reasonable way. But also, you need to specify what you mean by 'company': lots of companies are actually made up of lots of partially or fully owned subsidiaries. There's no monolithic Apple or Google. Lots of the details of that structure depend on responses to tax incentives. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/alapshah/2018/08/02/apple-hits-1-trillion-but-its-still-not-the-most-valuable-company-in-the-world/#2c838ce02175 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alapshah/2018/08/02/apple-hits-... for some attempt. Instead of looking at total value, you could also look at something like profit per employee or revenue per employee. But that's also not quite so clear cut.
- dylan604 7y ago>The court’s decision is retroactive. This seems like a pandora's box. If the employees are already off the clock to endure this delay for the searches, how will they be able to show how much time was lost in a way that would be worthy of a payment?
- differentView 7y agoThey can ballpark it. Round up if necessary.
- throwaway2048 7y agoI'm sure apple can afford it
- forgottenpass 7y ago>This seems like a pandora's box. Of what? Damages can rarely be calculated perfectly. It's not the court's fault Apple falsified timecard data.
- CivBase 7y agoThe whole concept of searching your employees after their shift just pisses me off. Just install security cameras and track your inventory. If your inventory is off, check the security footage. This isn't rocket science.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 7y agoThe morale destruction must be enormous, being treated like a potential criminal at the end of each workday. Seems like a tech company should have a tech solution to this.
- ackshually 7y agohigh school dropout NSA knock offs are cheaper than competent security staff.
- tmpz22 7y agoWhy can’t they just keep proper inventory and reduce their lost inventory liability with basic tracking and analytics? If high value goods go missing during a particular shift at a particular store THEN you increase security at that one store or ideally track which employee took the goods and make an example of them by taking them to civil court since the average Apple product is much more then petty theft...
- rezgi 7y agoReally... Apple makes huge margins, and they can't afford to pay for the time they require their employees to work? Also, the fact that this is even possible is a very good example why the US needs more unions. It obviously doesn't work with the current model where employees (of any industry) gets screwed over by the corporate overlords. But no, union BAD!! I don't see a better way to bring weight to the table and force employers to do the right thing, they certainly won't do it of their own accord.
- pengstrom 7y agoExectly. With Apples great resources comes great responsibility. They have no excuse for not treating their employees with respect.
- ghostpepper 7y agoWhat exactly is meant by having their personal Apple devices searched? Searching a backpack for stolen hardware seems somewhat reasonable (although it doesn’t reflect well on their hiring standards) but what right does Apple, champion of privacy, have to search through their employees devices?
- avian 7y agoNote that it says "personal Apple devices", not smartphones or laptops in general. I think what is probably meant is that they check whether someone for example swapped their old iPhone with a new one from the shop's inventory (maybe by checking serial number, etc.).
- maxehmookau 7y agoYes. Yes, they should. The fact that this went to court is outrageous.
- ubermonkey 7y agoI thought this kind of thing was settled law long ago. Good that court agrees.