I'm conflicted about the decision for a few reasons:

1. The "off-the-clock" mandates came from individual managers, not from Apple corporate so Apple corporate should have addressed that immediately. Unless that's been changed recently, this could have been nipped in the bud from the start.

2. The store policies do outline that personal bags must be inspected before employees leave the store but it doesn't mention anything about whether that needs to be done after they've clocked out. I used to work with/in an Apple Store and even we were required to do this but it was always done before we clocked out for the day. I know the article says that employees were required to clock out prior to the bag check but that was not my experience.

3. Retail employees should absolutely have been paid by those managers if they were mandating this and it should never have gone to court in the first place. The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way.

4. Policies also spelled this out before employees came into the stores. If I knew I wasn't getting paid for this, I feel like I'd be less inclined to bring a bag with me. Not sure if that's right but it feels like there should have been some pushback from employees to higher-level people. It sounds like an HR issue from the get-go.

Right. I can absolutely imagine how midlevel management created this issue, under complicated circumstances (employee variability, store level theft issues, time clocks, performance measurements, standard retail practices, etc)

And sure, not being paid for screening time does disincentivize the bringing of bags (although in a somewhat gender-discriminatory way -- males would have fewer issues than females). Reducing the number of bags to screen reduces the workload of the screener, and reduces the chance that something will be missed, which is clearly a benefit to the company.

But at some point, someone at the CxO level has to step in and do the right thing for employees and for the company. Apple's brand is damaged by this practice, and by this lawsuit, regardless of the decision.

>Apple's brand is damaged by this practice, and by this lawsuit, regardless of the decision.

Agreed, if it's determined that they didn't act appropriately. The fact that they were already absolved once, though, makes me feel like there are details being left out. To me, it just comes off as overzealous managers trying to prevent theft by ensuring that employees aren't heading back to the back to room after their bags get checked.

If Apple was previously absolved by the legal interpretation that an employer is only responsible for paying employees for productive work, then I do not consider their actions appropriate.

But it's also quite true that lawyers salivate at the prospect of a suit getting to class status, and make no earnest effort to settle for damages and policy changes on behalf of their putative clients.

And of course, Apple is a juicy target. If Apple attempted the former legal defense in response to the latter vampiric offense, then its pigs and mud all the way down.

> The decision is right but I feel like most of the costs are going to go to lawyers and that rubs me the wrong way.

Please be aware that this attitude is being deliberately nurtured by big businesses to erode support for class-action lawsuits (much like the McDonald's hot coffee controversy was deliberately and loudly misrepresented to make people cynical towards perfectly-justified personal injury suits).

Class-action suits are not supposed to make injured parties whole, that has never been the point; they are supposed to function as an expensive deterrent to bad behavior. But businesses would rather they go away entirely, so they want to make people angry at "those wily lawyers getting rich instead of the little guy". It's just as disingenuous and disgusting as attacking defense attorneys for "sticking up for bad guys".

>this attitude is being deliberately nurtured by big businesses to erode support for class-action lawsuits

While this may be true that's not my issue with this. I know that class-action suits are not meant to make injured parties whole but that's exactly what I take issue with. The fact that a company can essentially pay away its mistakes, when most are knowingly made, is a direct result of the lawyers. I can't help but think of Fight Club - if the cost to change the offending process/product is more than the cost of potential lawsuits, the change isn't made. While that's good business, it's immoral and wrong.

> a company can essentially pay away its mistakes

It would be hard to find a company or person that actually does something without breaking any laws. Not caring about less relevant things and then possibly paying some fines seems an integral requirement of current legal and social systems, not a result of lawyers or courts.

Mistakes, omissions or wilful ignorance w.r.t. less serious matters - not immoral or wrong IMO.

Knowledgeable intentional transgressions (not a mistake) or mistakes with serious, dangerous matters - bad, sometimes very very immoral and wrong.

Reasonable people can reasonably disagree on the merits of the hot coffee case. I've read extensively on it and my personal read is that it's an absurd judgement, mostly emotionally-driven, due to a sympathetic plaintiff and an unsympathetic defendant.

tl;dr writeup I did here the last time this came up on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23482931

That aside, you're absolutely right on the purpose of class actions. Generally the cause of action for individual case members is prohibitively small anyways. It's to form big legal sticks to beat misbehaving companies with, not to make the injured parties (whose injuries are usually pretty small in your average class action) whole.

Managers are generally considered to be agents of the company, so, their actions can legally incur liability on the company. I don't find it that hard to believe that individual store managers might do this, but that word of the practice might not make it up to corporate. This explanation is simple and plausible enough to me that I'm inclined to think it's probably exactly what had been happening.

That's likely how things started. Retail management was hired from other stores (e.g. Burberry), and followed their preexisting understanding of appropriate legal policy.

But at some point the issue went up the food chain. Corporate had many opportunities to step in and make things right before the suit reached the 9th Circuit.

>their actions can legally incur liability on the company

Of course. I agree 100% on this point. I'm just skeptical when articles like this frame the issue as this being some evil plan by Apple to not pay their employees. Apple treats their employees better than 99% of the companies out there (Gravity Payments is an obvious exclusion for me) and, while they're not perfect, it's obvious to me that this article is just banking on anti-Apple sentiment. The reality is far more boring and I feel like this went to a class-action suit too quickly. If higher-ups at Apple had been notified that this was happening, I feel like they would have made it right (at least based on my experience).

It's quite bizarre, especially when you consider how inefficient Apple stores are to begin with. They're intended as much for marketing, brand awareness, and a display of gluttony via the impressive modern construction that invites parallels to their premium products and manufacturing quality, as they are for actually selling products. They have way more employees working than they'd need if they just had normal retail workflows with check-out counters (and are also more frustrating to navigate as a customer). They even include entire mini-auditoriums to put on free events, weird seminars and panels and even concerts that nobody asked for.

But making sure employees aren't paid while they wait to be able to leave is a critically important cost-saving measure and worth going to court over?

Apple has a bit of a "never give a single inch" strategy to the bad things that it does.

No matter how wrong it is (and, such as this case, where they lost in court), they will fight it to the very end.

I posted a similar sentiment but you've highlighted the key point. It's (slightly) understandable that this was company policy as it was probably decided somewhere down the food chain.

But at the point it became a court case, red lights should have been flashing at the highest levels that this was the kind of thing that paints the company in a terrible light.

This is proper "don't be evil" territory. Don't be the bad guys, the cardboard cutout evil capitalists.

Nobody on the board thought this was a bad look?

>This is proper "don't be evil" territory.

It's a bad look, for sure, but common in high end retail.

Proper evil territory featuring cardboard cutout evil capitalists looks more like this:

>Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/technology/google-rescind...

Maybe I'm really way more removed from tech than I thought, but isn't there a difference?

Apple: Not paying you for mandated time spent at work for the employers benefit.

Google: Cuts temporary and contract workers because of budget problems.

What makes the first regular retail action, and the second evil? Because I would argue that both, while garbage, are, in-fact, pretty standard things that bad people do. Contract and temp employees are the first to go when times get bad. That's true across industry, correct? What am I missing?

>What am I missing?

If Google can hand a $90 million dollar bonus payment to Andy Rubin after they investigate him for sexual assault on a subordinate and ask him to leave the company, they can afford to pay a few contract employees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...

Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.

> Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.

So have Google, Facebook, Twitter:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-google-facebook-...

Of course I still understand the frustration with the some thousand people who were denied jobs after they made it all the way through the funnel, but it's still not the same thing.

Again, if Google can afford to hand a ninety million dollar bonus to a supervisor who they fire for sexually assaulting a subordinate, they can certainly afford to live up to the job offers they make to the little people.

Or is this suddenly not about what's right, when we're talking about Google?

Apple paying people for all the time they are required to be present for their shift is certainly what's right, even in districts where doing so has not yet been legally mandated, correct?

You said:

> Apple has continued to pay it's contract employees who aren't able to work under current conditions.

This implies that Google is not doing so, which is untrue. Please stop trying to change the subject.

Given that I linked to articles describing the exact behavior I am criticizing (screwing over people in a global pandemic after offering them a job, and paying a ninety million dollar bonus to a high level executive when he is being fired for sexually assaulting a subordinate) I'm not implying anything.

I'm criticizing specific behaviors that I find to be more in line with the notion of "cardboard cutout evil capitalists".

This seems like a fundamental mistunderstanding of why a business of Google's size keeps around temporary and contract workers. One of the specific benefits is having a group of people that can be reduced without having actual layoffs ("actual" as in legal definition). If Google wasn't going to do this and pay them regardless of the need for them, they never would have hired them as temporary or contract workers in the first place.

But with shitty stuff like this you don't want to be the company that loses the case.

Apple needs a new HR director

Disagree, as Apple, it is in their best interest to fight this.

For apple, employee are expenses, reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

You aren't required by corporate ethics to be maximally unethical especially when it contravenes the law. Being perceived as unethical towards your workforce can furthermore hurt recruiting meaning that after you have begun following the letter and spirit of the law per the courts mandate, even after you pay off the extortionate lawyers,, you now eat higher expenses to acquire and retain a competent workforce.

Its not the best thing for the corp or for the workers. Its a stupid decision.

>You aren't required by corporate ethics to be maximally unethical especially when it contravenes the law

agree, I don't expect corporate to be maximally unethical, rather I expect them to be maximally profitable.

>Being perceived as unethical towards your workforce can furthermore hurt

Agree, but if they can find a way to minimize that perception so that the risk doesn't overweight the benefit then they should.

You are aware that the business judgement rule[0] allows company directors wide latitude in how they run the company, right? I understand expecting companies to make strong efforts to be as profitable as possible, but there is literally no need to do so at the expense of both employees and the company's public image. Rather than trying to "minimize that perception," the simplest way to deal with this type of scenario is to just not do the bad thing.

---

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule

>but there is literally no need to do so at the expense of both employees and the company's public image

Thats depends, if the goal is maximal profitability and the cost/risk doing that is minimal then they should do it.

...was it worth the legal costs?

By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too.

(To clarify, it's not that I necessarily think there's anything particularly egregious about the original practice since it seems commonplace, but the replyee's sentiment that they should've just given in is absolutely correct.)

“ By this logic they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too”

They would totally do that if they thought they could get away with it.

Please don't give them any ideas.

If they won, yes.

>By this measure they might as well try not paying their employees at all and letting that go to court too

If they can figure out the way to do that, they should.

No, no they should not. I am not going to argue with this.

edit: Also, "if they won" -- that's an assumption that is already false. If you just disregard risk all the time, you go out of business.

Not saying to disregard risk. Of course the cost vs benefit analysis have to be done.

OK, but you also shouldn't disregard ethics. Even if you have the most egregiously simplified view of capitalism, disregarding ethics continuously can catch up with you. Plus, there are plenty of other reasons to not short-change your employees. Your employees are.. You. They're your company. If you try to skimp on paying your employees, they will find ways to return the favor. Trust me, I worked in retail.

Not saying to disregard ethics.

>you try to skimp on paying your employees, they will find ways to return the favor.

That would be included in the cost/risk part. If the cost/risk of skimp on paying your employees < benefit then they should do it.

Looking at the world through the lens of only corporate cost/benefit and essentially disregarding externalities feels unwise. You could always just follow the rules as they were intended to be followed, not end up in the news, not pay court fees, and have happier employees, regardless of if your bottom line will technically better at year-end. (I know roughly ~nobody actually does this, but wishful thinking.)

Regardless, at this point you seem to basically be saying, "They should do it, unless it's not worth it." Everyone else is saying "It's not worth it, and that's why they should not do it."

> Regardless, at this point you seem to basically be saying, "They should do it, unless it's not worth it." Everyone else is saying "It's not worth it, and that's why they should not do it."

Some people are also saying "whether it'd be worth it or not, they should not do it."

> If they won, yes.

They didn't though. So maybe the shareholders should sue Apple for not working in their interests?

If, as you say, Apple is required to maximize shareholder value, or whatever, then this seems like an excellent example of them failing to uphold that.

This was an obviously stupid decision on Apple's part.

Not from an optics POV companies don't want to be the plaintiff in high profile cases like this.

> reducing expense and increasing profit is what a company should do.

Who said that?

There is a bizarre school of thought that goes as follows: The company has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders, which forces the company to do anything and everything to maximize profits at all costs. Anyone working for the company who fails to do this can be sued by shareholders for violating their fiduciary duty.

Of course this is nonsense. As far as I can tell, "fiduciary duty" simply prevents self-dealing and other unethical behavior by company employees. Such as, for example, a VP selling company-owned real estate to his brother for $1, and saying "well it seemed like a reasonable price".

I earnestly hope that you are not in a position to hire employees, and that you never reach such a position without developing a better ethical sense and maybe some empathy.

In practice, your approach seems like it would result in very poor employee performance due to them not feeling valued, but the world is a weird place, and it might take some time before reality catches up.

If I'm the employee I too would fully expect company to do this kind of thing.

Meanwhile As employee I would try to do the same but in the opposite: to extract as much as possible (money/knowledge/whatever) from the company while minimizing my effort as much as possible.

Good employees are an ASSET, and treating employees shabbily jeopardizes your chances of hiring the best ones.