U.S. District Judge William Alsup today dismissed a lawsuit against Apple that had been brought by several retail employees over Apple's policy of conducting required security searches of personal bags without compensation after workers had clocked out for meal breaks or at the end of their shifts, reports Bloomberg. The class action lawsuit covered thousands of employees at Apple's California retail stores.
The ruling by a San Francisco federal judge Saturday releases the company from having to compensate as many [as] 12,400 former and current employees from 52 stores throughout the state a few dollars a day for time spent over a six-year period having their bags and Apple devices searched at meal breaks and after their shifts. A law professor who reviewed filings in the case estimated Apple could have been be on the hook for as much as $60 million, plus penalties.
In his ruling, Alsup noted that employees could have avoided the searches, as some employees did, by not bringing personal bags to work. The lawsuit had been restricted to California as the U.S. Supreme Court had previously ruled workers are not entitled to compensation for time spent in post-shift bag searches under federal law.
An attorney for the plaintiffs in the case reports they are weighing their potential next steps, which could include an appeal of Alsup's ruling.
Top Rated Comments
Which isn't realistic. People lead busy lives. It's not always possible to avoid bringing personal effects with you to work. Sometimes you have things to do after work and have to bring personal effects with you.
If an employer wants to make a bag search part of the routine, then they need to make sure it's done within the parameters of the employee's shift. Outside of that, they are infringing on the employee's personal time. My daughter worked at a very large retailer (who shall remain unnamed) while going to college and they would often times keep her 15-20 minutes after work unpaid waiting for a manager to get a free minute to check her bag before leaving. Expecting that of people is reasonable, but not compensating them for their time is not.
I hope the attorneys representing the employees have other ways to attack this. It's wrong and should be corrected.
So Apple's a bad retailer for using the same procedures in their stores that every other retailer does?
So you want the store to pay your daughter more than the others who work there because she made plans after work which have absolutely nothing to do with the store's function or her job.
Why does your kid deserve more money because she chose to bring a personal bag into a retail workplace? Is she a princess or somehow special? Should everyone else ALSO stay on the clock and be forced to hang out to accommodate your daughter's time waiting because SHE decided that she just HAD to bring in her bag to accommodate HER plans?
Or even worse, why should your daughter basically get to stop working before the others on the shift and NOT do the work the entire time she is scheduled? Why should everyone else have to work their shifts end-to-end while your kid gets to stand in a line and NOT work for the 15-20 minutes? Oh yeah. Because it's a party or something and it's just that important.
No. You can either deal with it, or get another job. Same as everyone else in that industry. You don't need to bring that purse to work. Use your pocket, and if it's too much to handle, get a different job.
The even simpler solution would be to just have your butler bring your lunch (with Grey Poupon of course) when it's time to eat.
Didn't say that. I said they should get their crap together and do the bag search on their own time, before the end of the employee's shift.
Wow, you get really aggressive about this? I take it you've never worked for an employer that makes these kinds of unreasonable demands or you have and were too weak to recognize that it's wrong. It's not about being special or deserving something special. It's about the company having demands but not wanting to pay for that. If they want to search bags, they need to do it on their own time. People have lives outside of work and an employer should take the fact that they employ human beings into account. Sometimes, people have to bring things to work. That's not unreasonable.
Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. The employer should get their act together and either do the bag search immediately after the employee clocks off or shortly before. And clearly, you have no idea the pittance that retailers are paying nowadays. It's not like a company is losing tons of cash because an employee isn't working for a few minutes at the end of their shift.
Do you think a big, national retailers expecting their employees to wait around 15-20 minutes is reasonable?
The entire freakin' industry does it. And guess what? That doesn't make it right. In fact, I'm disappointed to hear that Apple is just fine following the herd and treating their employees the same, disrespectful way any other retailer does. They should be ashamed.
And before you ask, some people do not drive and use public transport to get to their job . . . or park their car in a place where it's not fiesable to run to it just to get your bag for your lunch.
A good judge would deliver the right verdict, not just uphold a law without thinking first to see if said law is corrupt or not. Not every law in the nation that passed parliament is in the best interests of the nation. Even in Australia we have had a few laws pass our state parmiament here in Queensland that will severely hurt the business confidence and certain industries bottom line.
Or you use the court of appeal and hope you get a new judge who has enough sense to see the right things.
If you are paid by the hour, when you clock off you are on your time, free to go. Being forced to stay there off the clock is wrong. In Australia that kind of case would be shut down so fast it would be blinding. The employer would lose in a heartbeat. I've worked ni hospitality industries. And for me I did have a few bag checks at some places and all of them were on the clock. The only thing non on the clock was me getting dressed into my chef's whites. But I had to that at work jsut before I started as you just can not travel to work or home from work in your whites. That's just a no-no and ungygienic.
Only in the USA would employeers be able to enforce unpaid overtime on the per hour wage paid employees.