Years after arguing, Apple finally decided to settle the lawsuit against its store workers in California, by paying around $30 million for the whole class.
The lawsuit was regarding unpaid bag checks that Apple made of its California store employees, for potential stealing of gadgets. The bag check policy was mandated for nearly 6 years and later discontinued.
Employees Against Apple Policies
Companies all around the world often set harsh policies to prevent their employees from stealing any of the company’s assets. Few of them could be routine body checks and offering dedicated shelves for leaving their belongings outside the premises.
This is often considered as a part of the employee’s working time and considered paying for that extra time too. But Apple denied and was forced to pay a hefty sum now.
As per the court documents filed in the District of California on Friday, Apple agreed to settle a long battle with its California store employees, by paying them each some $1,200.
It’s estimated that there were about 14,683 employees – all eligible to receive a part of this settlement.
This is because of the bag check policy Apple introduced in 2009 and mandated until 2015. According to it, every Apple store’s manager or the security guard had to check the employee’s bags for potentially stolen items, after their working hours.
And since this ranged from 5 to 20 or even upto 45 minutes in busiest days, the store employees demanded to be paid for that extra time.
Though Apple succeeded in dumping the lawsuit in 2015, it was revived by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020, and later taken by the California Supreme Court, which ultimately ordered Apple to pay the sum of about $29.9 million.
