7 ms·

The fact that Apple let this go to court is disappointing. Apple should do the right thing here, even if they are not legally obligated. Pay retail employees

The fact that Apple let this go to court is disappointing. Apple should do the right thing here, even if they are not legally obligated. Pay retail employees for all work which is required of them. Do not dither over trivialities.

andybak 6y ago
I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain. But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light. This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists. Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  >This is proper "don't be evil" territory. It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail. Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this: >Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescinds-job-offers-to-contract-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Maybe I'm really way more removed from tech than I thought, but isn't there a difference? Apple: Not paying you for mandated time spent at work for the employers benefit. Google: Cuts temporary and contract workers because of budget problems. What makes the first regular retail action, and the second evil? Because I would argue that both, while garbage, are, in-fact, pretty standard things that bad people do. Contract and temp employees are the first to go when times get bad. That's true across industry, correct? What am I missing?
    - GeekyBear 6y ago
      >What am I missing? If Google can hand a $90 million dollar bonus payment to Andy Rubin after they investigate him for sexual assault on a subordinate and ask him to leave the company, they can afford to pay a few contract employees. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-... Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.
      - jchw 6y ago
        > Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions. So have Google, Facebook, Twitter: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-twitter-contractors-to-get-regular-pay.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-... Of course I still understand the frustration with the some thousand people who were denied jobs after they made it all the way through the funnel, but it's still not the same thing.
        GeekyBear 6y ago
        Again, if Google can afford to hand a ninety million dollar bonus to a supervisor who they fire for sexually assaulting a subordinate, they can certainly afford to live up to the job offers they make to the little people. Or is this suddenly not about what's right, when we're talking about Google? Apple paying people for all the time they are required to be present for their shift is certainly what's right, even in districts where doing so has not yet been legally mandated, correct?
        jchw 6y ago
        You said: > Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions. This implies that Google is not doing so, which is untrue. Please stop trying to change the subject.
        6y ago
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    But with shitty stuff like this you don't want to be the company that loses the case. Apple needs a new HR director
  - jdmichal 6y ago
    This seems like a fundamental mistunderstanding of why a business of Google's size keeps around temporary and contract workers. One of the specific benefits is having a group of people that can be reduced without having actual layoffs ("actual" as in legal definition). If Google wasn't going to do this and pay them regardless of the need for them, they never would have hired them as temporary or contract workers in the first place.
matz1 6y ago
Disagree, as Apple, it is in their best interest to fight this. For apple, employee are expenses, reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.
- jchw 6y ago
  ...was it worth the legal costs? By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too. (To clarify, it's not that I necessarily think there's anything particularly egregious about the original practice since it seems commonplace, but the replyee's sentiment that they should've just given in is absolutely correct.)
  - matz1 6y ago
    If they won, yes. >By this measure they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too If they can figure out the way to do that, they should.
    - jchw 6y ago
      No, no they should not. I am not going to argue with this. edit: Also, "if they won" -- that's an assumption that is already false. If you just disregard risk all the time, you go out of business.
      - matz1 6y ago
        Not saying to disregard risk. Of course the cost vs benefit analysis have to be done.
        jchw 6y ago
        OK, but you also shouldn't disregard ethics. Even if you have the most egregiously simplified view of capitalism, disregarding ethics continuously can catch up with you. Plus, there are plenty of other reasons to not short-change your employees. Your employees are.. You. They're your company. If you try to skimp on paying your employees, they will find ways to return the favor. Trust me, I worked in retail.
dkonofalski 6y ago
I'm conflicted about the decision for a few reasons: 1. The "off-the-clock" mandates came from individual managers, not from Apple corporate so Apple corporate should have addressed that immediately. Unless that's been changed recently, this could have been nipped in the bud from the start. 2. The store policies do outline that personal bags must be inspected before employees leave the store but it doesn't mention anything about whether that needs to be done after they've clocked out. I used to work with/in an Apple Store and even we were required to do this but it was always done before we clocked out for the day. I know the article says that employees were required to clock out prior to the bag check but that was not my experience. 3. Retail employees should absolutely have been paid by those managers if they were mandating this and it should never have gone to court in the first place. The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way. 4. Policies also spelled this out before employees came into the stores. If I knew I wasn't getting paid for this, I feel like I'd be less inclined to bring a bag with me. Not sure if that's right but it feels like there should have been some pushback from employees to higher-level people. It sounds like an HR issue from the get-go.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Managers are generally considered to be agents of the company, so, their actions can legally incur liability on the company. I don't find it that hard to believe that individual store managers might do this, but that word of the practice might not make it up to corporate. This explanation is simple and plausible enough to me that I'm inclined to think it's probably exactly what had been happening.
  - quesera 6y ago
    That's likely how things started. Retail management was hired from other stores (e.g. Burberry), and followed their preexisting understanding of appropriate legal policy. But at some point the issue went up the food chain. Corporate had many opportunities to step in and make things right before the suit reached the 9th Circuit.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
stale2002 6y ago
Apple has a bit of a "never give a single inch" strategy to the bad things that it does. No matter how wrong it is (and, such as this case, where they lost in court), they will fight it to the very end.
cactus2093 6y ago
It's quite bizarre, especially when you consider how inefficient Apple stores are to begin with. They're intended as much for marketing, brand awareness, and a display of gluttony via the impressive modern construction that invites parallels to their premium products and manufacturing quality, as they are for actually selling products. They have way more employees working than they'd need if they just had normal retail workflows with check-out counters (and are also more frustrating to navigate as a customer). They even include entire mini-auditoriums to put on free events, weird seminars and panels and even concerts that nobody asked for. But making sure employees aren't paid while they wait to be able to leave is a critically important cost-saving measure and worth going to court over?

andybak 6y ago

I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain. But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light. This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists. Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?

GeekyBear 6y ago
>This is proper "don't be evil" territory. It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail. Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this: >Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescinds-job-offers-to-contract-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...
- Loughla 6y ago
  Maybe I'm really way more removed from tech than I thought, but isn't there a difference? Apple: Not paying you for mandated time spent at work for the employers benefit. Google: Cuts temporary and contract workers because of budget problems. What makes the first regular retail action, and the second evil? Because I would argue that both, while garbage, are, in-fact, pretty standard things that bad people do. Contract and temp employees are the first to go when times get bad. That's true across industry, correct? What am I missing?
  - GeekyBear 6y ago
    >What am I missing? If Google can hand a $90 million dollar bonus payment to Andy Rubin after they investigate him for sexual assault on a subordinate and ask him to leave the company, they can afford to pay a few contract employees. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-... Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.
    - jchw 6y ago
      > Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions. So have Google, Facebook, Twitter: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-twitter-contractors-to-get-regular-pay.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-... Of course I still understand the frustration with the some thousand people who were denied jobs after they made it all the way through the funnel, but it's still not the same thing.
      - GeekyBear 6y ago
        Again, if Google can afford to hand a ninety million dollar bonus to a supervisor who they fire for sexually assaulting a subordinate, they can certainly afford to live up to the job offers they make to the little people. Or is this suddenly not about what's right, when we're talking about Google? Apple paying people for all the time they are required to be present for their shift is certainly what's right, even in districts where doing so has not yet been legally mandated, correct?
        jchw 6y ago
        You said: > Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions. This implies that Google is not doing so, which is untrue. Please stop trying to change the subject.
        6y ago
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  But with shitty stuff like this you don't want to be the company that loses the case. Apple needs a new HR director
- jdmichal 6y ago
  This seems like a fundamental mistunderstanding of why a business of Google's size keeps around temporary and contract workers. One of the specific benefits is having a group of people that can be reduced without having actual layoffs ("actual" as in legal definition). If Google wasn't going to do this and pay them regardless of the need for them, they never would have hired them as temporary or contract workers in the first place.

matz1 6y ago

Disagree, as Apple, it is in their best interest to fight this. For apple, employee are expenses, reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

jchw 6y ago
...was it worth the legal costs? By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too. (To clarify, it's not that I necessarily think there's anything particularly egregious about the original practice since it seems commonplace, but the replyee's sentiment that they should've just given in is absolutely correct.)
- matz1 6y ago
  If they won, yes. >By this measure they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too If they can figure out the way to do that, they should.
  - jchw 6y ago
    No, no they should not. I am not going to argue with this. edit: Also, "if they won" -- that's an assumption that is already false. If you just disregard risk all the time, you go out of business.
    - matz1 6y ago
      Not saying to disregard risk. Of course the cost vs benefit analysis have to be done.
      - jchw 6y ago
        OK, but you also shouldn't disregard ethics. Even if you have the most egregiously simplified view of capitalism, disregarding ethics continuously can catch up with you. Plus, there are plenty of other reasons to not short-change your employees. Your employees are.. You. They're your company. If you try to skimp on paying your employees, they will find ways to return the favor. Trust me, I worked in retail.

dkonofalski 6y ago

I'm conflicted about the decision for a few reasons: 1. The "off-the-clock" mandates came from individual managers, not from Apple corporate so Apple corporate should have addressed that immediately. Unless that's been changed recently, this could have been nipped in the bud from the start. 2. The store policies do outline that personal bags must be inspected before employees leave the store but it doesn't mention anything about whether that needs to be done after they've clocked out. I used to work with/in an Apple Store and even we were required to do this but it was always done before we clocked out for the day. I know the article says that employees were required to clock out prior to the bag check but that was not my experience. 3. Retail employees should absolutely have been paid by those managers if they were mandating this and it should never have gone to court in the first place. The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way. 4. Policies also spelled this out before employees came into the stores. If I knew I wasn't getting paid for this, I feel like I'd be less inclined to bring a bag with me. Not sure if that's right but it feels like there should have been some pushback from employees to higher-level people. It sounds like an HR issue from the get-go.

pmiller2 6y ago
Managers are generally considered to be agents of the company, so, their actions can legally incur liability on the company. I don't find it that hard to believe that individual store managers might do this, but that word of the practice might not make it up to corporate. This explanation is simple and plausible enough to me that I'm inclined to think it's probably exactly what had been happening.
- quesera 6y ago
  That's likely how things started. Retail management was hired from other stores (e.g. Burberry), and followed their preexisting understanding of appropriate legal policy. But at some point the issue went up the food chain. Corporate had many opportunities to step in and make things right before the suit reached the 9th Circuit.
- dkonofalski 6y ago

stale2002 6y ago

Apple has a bit of a "never give a single inch" strategy to the bad things that it does. No matter how wrong it is (and, such as this case, where they lost in court), they will fight it to the very end.

cactus2093 6y ago

It's quite bizarre, especially when you consider how inefficient Apple stores are to begin with. They're intended as much for marketing, brand awareness, and a display of gluttony via the impressive modern construction that invites parallels to their premium products and manufacturing quality, as they are for actually selling products. They have way more employees working than they'd need if they just had normal retail workflows with check-out counters (and are also more frustrating to navigate as a customer). They even include entire mini-auditoriums to put on free events, weird seminars and panels and even concerts that nobody asked for. But making sure employees aren't paid while they wait to be able to leave is a critically important cost-saving measure and worth going to court over?