
Apple owes $2M for not giving workers meal breaks - brakmic
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/15/technology/apple-class-action-meal-breaks/index.html
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greenyoda
_" The complaint says Apple's culture of secrecy keeps employees from talking
about the company's poor working conditions. 'If [employees] so much as
discuss the various labor policies, they run the risk of being fired, sued or
disciplined,' the complaint reads."_

Retaliation against employees discussing work conditions or trying to organize
a union is a violation of federal labor laws. So Apple isn't just violating
California laws here.

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jrockway
> The complaint says Apple's culture of secrecy keeps employees from talking
> about the company's poor working conditions. "If [employees] so much as
> discuss the various labor policies, they run the risk of being fired, sued
> or disciplined," the complaint reads.

Does anyone have a copy of the complaint? I'd love to read some of these
lawsuits against employees and see how much Apple gets from suing retail
employees. (My guess is that they've never done this, but hey, I'm willing to
be surprised.)

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mturmon
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.

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theaustinseven
At the last company I worked at, one of the first things they told us was,"you
must take these certain breaks at approximately certain times in the day". The
timing didn't have to be exact, but this approach allowed people to take
breaks in a more informal manner(they could adjust an hour or so in either
direction), but kept compliance with regulations. I think this approach allows
the employers to be somewhat informal about breaks, without opening themselves
to lawsuits.

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brohoolio
If large multinational companies like this are violating employment law I
can't even imagine what smaller companies are doing.

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formula1
Probably not violating laws because they dont have the money to pay for
lawyers and politicians

~~~
yardie
Probably even doing worse because they don't have the money to pay for lawyers
nor competent HR if they even have that.

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maxerickson
This isn't exactly a high bar we are talking about here.

The timings of legally required breaks is the kind of thing you put on a one
page summary that you give to anyone doing management of people that get those
breaks.

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yardie
Legally required breaks are the low hanging fruit of labor disputes. A lot of
small businesses really fuck it up by: misclassification of exempt employees,
1099 vs W-2 employees, overtime, inadequate safety equipment, inadequate
safety training.

Granted, some of these are because the SMB owner was simply uninformed, like
OSHA violations. Overtime is quite malicious though ie. you work 60 hours this
week, and 20 hours next week, manager moves that 20 hours OT onto next week,
thus denying you overtime.

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stevefeinstein
How much did Apple profit from denying lunch breaks to employees. I'll bet it
was more than $2 million.

The system is rigged, if you're big enough, even when you lose you win.

~~~
formula1
I would assume this is store by store. I doubt apple coorperate said "hey!
Those weak retail workers dont deserve lunch breaks!". However, there may be a
culture that exists to support it.

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srtjstjsj
autoplay audio/video on web page

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codecamper
Apple owes a hell of a lot more than that for not bothering to police fake
reviews on the app store.

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chipperyman573
The crazy thing about this is that instead they could have lost less than $2M
(assuming that the charges are punitive) to just let people take a break.
That's not even pocket change to apple. That's take-a-penny money to apple,
and the workers would've been happier and _able to eat_

~~~
bsder
Is it? $95 per employee is probably roughly 10 hours unpaid. An employee would
rack that up working there 1 hour every two days or every 20 days. This was
maintained across 5 years.

Apple still comes out ahead.

Until fines are _significantly_ more expensive (factor of 100+) than
compliance, this will continue.

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vadym909
I can't imagine Apple did this deliberately. Most large companies are aware
that the PR costs of such mistakes are higher that the costs and would never
deliberately try to screw over workers. It was probably an oversight by
one/some of its managers or vendors. Spend enough time auditing any Fortune
500 company's worker policies at a plant, warehouse or retail store and I'm
sure you'll find similar examples. Like the recent 60minutes covered 'Google
driveby lawsuits against stores'.

~~~
greenyoda
_" It was probably an oversight by one/some of its managers or vendors."_

The class action included 21,000 employees - that's more than just a couple of
Apple stores, so lots of managers were involved.

And what "vendors"? Apple stores are owned by Apple and their workers are
employees of Apple.

