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Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

latimes.com

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Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#101

Post by [deleted] »

FriendlyNormie wrote: post #53
jrockway wrote: post #15

> 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 customer…

Does Apple really have a “process” for picking items up? I ordered a maxed out iMac Pro for around $15,000 and waited nearly a month for it to finally arrive at the store. I got a voice mail and an email instructing me to come pick it up. Only upon driving all the way to the store was I finally informed in person that they “accidentally” gave my iMac Pro to the wrong customer an hour ago who had merely ordered a base…

[deleted]

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#102

Post by angry_octet »

matz1 wrote: post #64
eropple wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, you could treat people like people and give them an actual measure of respect instead of stealing time and money from them. But, frankly, literally every time without exception that I remember seeing you post, it's been a variation on the theme of "of course they shouldn't be decent, why should they, I shouldn't have to be decent either", so I'm going to pass on being surprised.

>Alternatively, you could treat people like people and give them an actual measure of respect instead of stealing time and money from them Thats depends on what one value, if you think treat people like people is important then yes you should do it but if one value profit then doing what apple did make sense.

Would you be unhappy if someone stole money from your bank account? Because you're condoning theft. It's not clever business practices, it's theft.

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#103

Post by im3w1l »

FriendlyNormie wrote: post #53
jrockway wrote: post #15

> 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 customer…

Does Apple really have a “process” for picking items up? I ordered a maxed out iMac Pro for around $15,000 and waited nearly a month for it to finally arrive at the store. I got a voice mail and an email instructing me to come pick it up. Only upon driving all the way to the store was I finally informed in person that they “accidentally” gave my iMac Pro to the wrong customer an hour ago who had merely ordered a base…

A maxed out computer is a perishable good - it's not going to be maxed out for long - and when it isn't the price falls rapidly. Did you get compensated for one month's depreciation?

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#104

Post by brlewis »

malwarebytess wrote: post #59
vageli wrote: post #52

Isn't this at odds with the ruling in Amazon's favor about a similar issue? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-c...

No, not necessarily. Pretty narrow ruling. It depends on the facts of the cases.

The 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

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#105

Post by sabujp »

beambot wrote: post #94
sabujp wrote: post #87

This 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?

EAS tags are notoriously simple to bypass for insiders.

i'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.

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#106

Post by londons_explore »

beambot wrote: post #94
sabujp wrote: post #87

This 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?

EAS tags are notoriously simple to bypass for insiders.

Apple could easily mark serial numbers of store devices and make sure they can't work anywhere outside the range of store wifi.

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#107

Post by londons_explore »

mnm1 wrote: post #79

So 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.

Would it be pay at the hourly contracted rate, or pay to meet minimum wage when the extra hours are considered?

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#108

Post by captain_qwark »

This 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.

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#109

Post by ohmaigad »

8ytecoder wrote: post #81

As 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?

Sounds like a good way to mass enabling discrimination based on where you live...

Re: Apple store workers should be paid for time waiting to be searched, court rules

#110

Post by thejteam »

pier25 wrote: post #3

Is this common in the US? (retail workers being searched)

My father worked in retail for over 40 years. 10 for Office Depot, which sells a lot of computers and phone stuff. He has never been subjected to a search, nor searched others.
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