One Apple employee was allegedly threatened with unspecified reprisals if they talked about their performance bonus. Another was purportedly ordered to delete a post on social media about how to continue working remotely at the company. One was allegedly told to stop talking about pay on internal messaging systems and warned that the tech giant was “monitoring these discussions.” And another, software engineer Cher Scarlett, was purportedly railroaded out of the company after creating an online pay survey for workers at the trillion-dollar company.
Those claims form the basis of a federal government charge accusing the Cupertino iPhone giant of illegally “interfering with, restraining and coercing employees” exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act to help each other with workplace issues.
Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the administrative complaint, filed Oct. 31 by the National Labor Relations Board.
The legal action by Scarlett — the former employee — and the agency that enforces the Labor Relations Act also claims that Apple denied an employee’s request to create an internal-messaging channel about pay equity, telling the worker the messaging platform was only for business purposes — despite letting other employees use it for non-business topics.
Additionally, the complaint alleges, Apple told an employee not to speak to the press after they were quoted in the media about workplace issues.
The worker who was ordered to remove the social-media post about remote work was also asked by a human resources representative to provide names of other Apple employees the person had talked with about working remotely, the complaint claims.
A manager in a phone call told a worker that Apple did not want employees talking about wages or pay equity, the complaint alleges.
The alleged incidents are purported to have happened in 2021.
According to the complaint, Scarlett helped found “Apple Too,” modeled after the #MeToo movement against sexual violence, and intended to encourage Apple employees “to share stories and create transparency around incidents of discrimination, inequity, racism, and sexism they experienced in the course of their employment” at Apple.
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In the summer of 2021, Scarlett created and posted online a pay-equity survey where Apple employees could anonymously share information about their compensation, job categories, experience and personal information “in order to identify potential pay disparities.” Scarlett posted the survey on her personal account on social media platform Twitter, now called X.
The labor board and Scarlett argue in the complaint that she was forced to leave the company by its response to her work on behalf of her fellow Apple workers. She announced on Twitter in November 2021 that she was leaving the company; technology website The Verge reported that she had reached a settlement with Apple.
Apple allegedly cracked down on other employees who took action in response to Scarlett’s advocacy. Apple demanded that one worker refrain from participating in the wage survey and was threatened with “unspecified reprisals” if they did, or if they continued to take part in wage discussions on the internal messaging platform, the complaint claims.
An Apple human resources manager refused to meet collectively with Apple workers concerned about the results of the wage survey, and insisted on individual meetings, the complaint alleges. That manager, Jeannie Wong, in a videoconference “interrogated an employee about why and how the employee got involved with Scarlett’s pay equity survey and who else was involved,” the complaint claims.