Apple’s former retail employees have come away victorious in their long legal battle against Apple in California.
A jury has ordered Apple to pay $2 million, after the iPhone-maker has found to have illegally denied retail staff meal and rest breaks and took weeks or months to give departing employees their last checks.
The class action lawsuit between Apple and its retail employees has been fought since 2011 when four employees in San Diego filed a class action complaint. The case quickly grew to include 21,000 former and current employees in the state of California.
In the original lawsuit filing, the four employees claimed that Apple policy forbad them from even discussing working conditions.
Despite winning the case, former employees won’t be getting much cash out of it. The $2 million dollars will be put into a fund to pay for the lawyers. Workers will then get a a maximum of $95. A pitance for their problems, but I’m sure employees at Foxconn would love to have shorter break times be the worst of their problems.
Cult of Mac reached out to Apple for a statement on the case but did not yet receive a reply.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
8 responses to “Apple must pay $2 million to employees it screwed over”
Shame on you but well done to those who fought them and won !
apple didn’t do anything. it was managers at those stores that were the issue. They were supposed to be supporting the policies and local laws, they didn’t.
that detail is likely why the payout required is so small. its basically a wrist slap.
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$95 per person. That’s it? Come on. Open up the pocket book and don’t be such a tight ass. I think maybe $25K would be better since they are retail employees, which aren’t high wage income jobs. At. least $10K per person at a minimum, not $95.
Uh, for those who don’t realize, the payouts are ALWAYS for the lawyers. Rarely do the plaintiffs ever make out very well. Why do you think these firms even take on these cases? It’s for the potential windfall once they win the case (it’s rare that a firm will take a case that isn’t roughly 80% likely to win, due to the time and costs involved to litigate).
The best thing you can do, if notified, is to exclude yourself from the class-action and hire your own attorney.
Please. No “This would never have happened with Steve Jobs.”..
except it did. this is all about events from the 1-2 years before Jobs died.
according to my sources at Apple, Cook demanded changes in how the appointment system was set up so managers had no excuses about not letting folks take breaks when they asked for them. And he started a push for managers to make staff take their paid breaks.
Little reward…but at least this type of shorty practice is being recognized.