Wikipedia

AppleToo

The correct title of this article is #AppleToo. The omission of the # is due to technical restrictions.

#AppleToo was a movement at Apple Inc. that started in August of 2021 during a period of employee unrest centered primarily on the maltreatment of women at the company.

#AppleToo
Part of employee unrest at Apple, Inc.
Date2021 (2021)

History

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In February 2016, a pay study at Apple found gender-based and racial-based wage gaps.[1] That August, Apple said they achieved equal pay for all US-based employees. At the same time, reports showed that Apple was over-represented by white men, especially in technical and leadership positions.[2][3] A month later, two anonymous women employed by the company sent emails to Mic that revealed a toxic work environment for women involving sexual harassment, rape jokes, and discrimination.[4] Other anonymous employees spoke out with similar concerns, alleging that the human resources (HR) department was corrupt and had a practice of retaliating against employees who make reports of misconduct.[5]

In May 2021, women at Apple began speaking out against the company on the record for the first time through the press and on the social media site Twitter.[6] After the hiring of Antonio García Martínez, the author of Chaos Monkeys (2016), thousands of employees questioned his hiring in an open letter to Eddy Cue.[7] In the book, García Martínez, wrote that women in the San Francisco bay area were "soft and weak" and "useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."[8] The letter was leaked to The Verge, and resulted in the departure of García Martínez shortly afterward.[9]

In August 2021, one of the authors of the open letter about García Martínez, security engineer Cher Scarlett, started a wage transparency survey after other employees were told such surveys were prohibited, which labor lawyers said was illegal.[10][11] Analysis of the preliminary results showed a 6% wage disparity between men and women. The survey also showed that white men had an outsized share of leadership and technical roles. She tweeted charts shared by The Verge she said were "alarming" that showed Apple's own demographic statistics were misleading; hiding that racial demographics among women were more balanced than men, and that women of color were most likely to be working in non-leadership roles in support, marketing, and retail.[12] For her effort, Scarlett was harassed, doxed, and stated that co-workers told her that their managers told them not to engage with her.[13]

#AppleToo event

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In August 2021, after encouraging other women on Twitter to come forward about a culture of sexual harassment and abuse at her former employer, Activision Blizzard, Cher Scarlett organized a similar movement at Apple.[14][11][15] When employees came to her looking for support, Scarlett and other anonymous Apple employees launched a website called #AppleToo on August 23, 2021, with a tag line "It's time to Think Different".[16][17][18] #AppleToo is a reference to the #MeToo movement and the sharing of personal stories — in the case of Apple, about sexual harassment and assault, gender and racial discrimination, verbal abuse, retaliation, ableism, and the mishandling of complaints by HR and management.[19][14][18][17] According to Scarlett, by the end of August they had received nearly 500 reports from workers.[20] Program manager Janneke Parrish joined as a co-leader and published some of the personal stories of past and current Apple workers including contractors.[21][13]

On September 3, 2021, the group published an open letter to CEO Tim Cook and the rest of the executive team, calling for signatures from fellow workers. The letter made five requests including increased privacy of personal information; transparent and fair compensation; an audit of all third-party relationships; increased accountability across leadership and human resource teams; and a process for sharing group concerns.[22]

On September 17, 2021, a recording from a company-wide meeting was leaked to the press. Parrish was investigated for the leak and fired after she removed personal applications from her phone.[23][24] The details in the press from the meeting were related to the allegations made by #AppleToo participants, pay equity, vaccination rules, and restrictive abortion rules concerning the impending the overturning of Roe v. Wade.[25][17][13] The company feigned support for women employees seeking to escape states where abortion was illegal,[26] and CEO Tim Cook sent a memo that people who leak details of confidential meetings "do not belong at Apple."[27]

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Between 2021 and 2022, more than a dozen additional women went to the press, including program manager Ashley Gjøvik, both on the record and anonymously, about gender pay gaps, discrimination, and the mishandling of sexual harassment and assault at Apple. Several reported a practice of being asked to resign in exchange for severance and signing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).[28][6][17]

In early 2022, some corporate employees involved in #AppleToo started a solidarity union called Apple Together. They also helped several retail stores organize into unions.[29]

In 2023, a report from Communications Workers of America found that the majority of Apple's diversity was found in Apple Retail, working in low-level jobs, according to an analysis of government-mandated reports. Apple says it does not use such reports to measure its diversity, equity, and inclusion progress. A retail employee started a wage transparency that year which found similar results.[30] Apple settled a discrimination lawsuit the following November for $25 million.[31]

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Scarlett filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against Apple for stifling employees from collecting wage data and discussing their salaries, for fostering a culture of harassment and abuse with unlawful rules, and for the memo sent by Cook to staff which was found to have merit in January 2023.[27][11]

On November 19, 2021, Apple posted a memo affirming employees' rights to discuss pay and working conditions.[32] While not an official response to one of the group's requests about a company-wide statement clarifying employee rights,[33] Parrish referred to the memo as a victory for the group,[34] and said it would "help end a systemic culture of silence around our working culture and pay equity".[35] Veena Dubal, a law professor, stated "this is a win for workers because it shows that Apple knows they would have lost had this been adjudicated",[34] referring to Scarlett's NLRB charge and the penalty that would have been assessed by the NLRB.[36] Dubal also highlighted how little the enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act does to deter employers from violating these laws.[34] Scarlett later tweeted that she had made four demands to Apple on September 2, 2021, the day after she filed the NLRB charge, one of which had been for the affirmation Apple had posted.[37]

In December 2021, Forbes reported that the NLRB had rejected the withdrawal request with the non-board settlement asking Apple to make 22 changes to the language in the document, including language suppressing her from helping other Apple employees organize and file charges against Apple for a period of one year.[38] She also confirmed that the memo posted in November was a part of the settlement she reached, but that Apple had only left it up for the week Apple had given the company off for Thanksgiving,[39] which she said did not uphold the agreement's requirement of the memo being published "in a prominent and visible location". In a statement to The Verge, she said she would have been "interested in [withdrawing the charge without the settlement] to avoid witnesses having to give testimony", but that the group decided to follow through with the charges in the face of potential retaliation because of how the company handled the posting of the memo.[37]

The wage transparency survey and #AppleToo event prompted several instances of shareholder activism. A "civil-rights audit," an investigation into the use of NDAs, and a "workers' rights assessment," were proposed and approved by shareholders.[40][41] They were the first shareholder actions approved in ten years.[42]

In response to a no-action request filed by Apple with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which claimed that it was not Apple's practice to use NDAs in employment contracts that inhibit an employee's ability to speak about working conditions, Cher Scarlett filed a whistleblower tip with the agency and shared a severance agreement that stipulated what she was allowed to say about her departure. A group of treasurers then called on the SEC to investigate Apple's use of NDAs.[43] The shareholder-prompted audit found that instances existed where NDAs would infringe on an employee's right to speak on unlawful conduct and agreed to remove all concealment clauses from employment contracts retroactively.[44] Laws enacted in California and Washington after the #AppleToo event barred the use of NDAs in employment contracts in relation to harassment, discrimination, and other unlawful activity.[45]

2024 lawsuit

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On June 13, 2024, two women filed a gender pay bias lawsuit on behalf of 12,000 current and former women at Apple in California against the company seeking class status, which also alleged sexual harassment at the company.[46] The suit alleged that Apple circumvents laws against asking for salary history by asking salary expectations which it states "has had a disparate impact on women," and that the performance review system is biased against women.[47][48] In its coverage, Ars Technica quoted the lawsuit as alleging, "The longer a woman works at Apple, the larger the gap in compensation she receives compared to similarly situated men."[49]

References

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  2. ^ Massie, Victoria M. (2016-08-07). "Apple's diversity report is better than that of most tech companies — with one exception". Vox. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
  3. ^ Mundy, Liza (2017-03-14). "Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?". The Atlantic. ISSN 2151-9463. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
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  25. ^ Jenkins, Cameron (2021-10-16). "Apple employee says she was fired for speaking out about workplace conditions". The Hill. Retrieved 2024-06-15.
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  34. ^ a b c Schiffer, Zoe (November 19, 2021). "Apple posts internal memo affirming employees' right to discuss pay". NBC News. Archived from the original on 19 December 2021. Retrieved 21 November 2021.
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  37. ^ a b Clark, Mitchell (December 9, 2021). "Former Apple employee says she won't withdraw her labor board complaint". The Verge. Retrieved 2022-04-25.
  38. ^ Au-Yeung, Angel (December 9, 2021). "Ex-Apple Engineer Cher Scarlett No Longer Withdrawing U.S. Labor Agency Complaint Against Apple". Forbes. Archived from the original on 9 December 2021. Retrieved 11 December 2021.
  39. ^ Warwick, Stephen (September 18, 2021). "Tim Cook addresses pay, diversity, privacy, and more at internal meeting". iMore. Archived from the original on 2021-09-18. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  40. ^ Lawler, Richard (2022-03-04). "Apple shareholders approve a civil rights audit and investigation of the risks of its NDAs". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
  41. ^ Scheiber, Noam (2023-01-17). "Apple Reaches Deal With Investors to Audit Its Labor Practices". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
  42. ^ Ogunnaike, Jade Magnus; Manely, Renaye (March 23, 2022). "Commentary: Investors are telling Apple to 'think different' about civil rights". Fortune. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
  43. ^ Roth, Emma (December 10, 2022). "Apple will let its employees talk about discrimination and abuse". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
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  46. ^ Egelko, Bob (June 13, 2024). "Female Apple employees claim gender pay bias in lawsuit seeking class status for 12,000 women". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved June 13, 2024.
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  49. ^ Belanger, Ashley (2024-06-14). "Apple punishes women for same behaviors that get men promoted, lawsuit says". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2024-06-15.
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