Our good friends at Apple have been caught in a legal whirlwind, AGAIN. The California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the tech conglomerate must pay their employees for time spent waiting, for their bags and personal electronic devices to be searched when they leave work. As if the obscene rule of getting your personal belongings searched at the end of a hard day at work wasn’t enough, we can only imagine the horror of Apple now that they are being asked to pay for it.
The decision by the Supreme Court means that Apple will have to dish out a substantial amount of their profit to their 12,000 odd workforce at all their California retail stores, who are subjected to the mandatory bag-search policy.
According to the bag-search policy, Apple employees are required to punch in their work cards before submitting their bags which can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes daily. On the busiest of days, certain Apple employees quoted that the search could last as long as 45 minutes. And if you haven’t guessed yet those who don’t want to comply with the policy are subjected to further discipline, which may or may not lead to termination.
A lower court did previously side with Apple as they ruled that the time spent by employees that are waiting for their exit searches cannot be described as “work hours” under California law. While the ruling did bring joy to the workforce, the board of Apple certainly has its work cut out for them.
While Apple could not be reached for an official statement, there is no word on when the overruled policy might actually take effect. Certain parameters such as the exact compensation for the time being spent should be figured out before any official decision might rollover. However, in a long-fought battle that has been waged between the big-boy firms and the workforce, this one certainly falls in the scorecard for the employees.
