Apple won’t have to compensate retail employees for waiting in line

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San Francisco Apple Store Line
Apple Stores are known for their long queues. But it's usually the customers who are waiting.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple won’t have to stump up the cash for back-paying thousands of current and former employees at Apple Stores across California, according to the ruling of a federal judge.

The lawsuit was brought against Apple in 2013 by two former retail employees — claiming that Apple’s policy of mandatory bag searches after work had cost them dozens of hours of unpaid wages, totalling around $1,500 per year.

The complaint became a class action suit in July this year, meaning that Apple could potentially have had to compensate 12,000+ current and former employees at its Californian retail stores.

The reason the judge let Apple off the hook? Because there was nothing stopping employees from not bringing a bag to work.

“Apple took a milder approach to theft prevention and offered its employees the option to bring bags and personal Apple devices into a store subject to the condition that such items must be searched when they leave the store,” said U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Francisco.

The decision follows a similar ruling last December, decreeing that Amazon didn’t have to pay employees for time spent waiting in security check lines.

Via: CNET

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