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The Courts Businesses Iphone The Almighty Buck Apple Technology

Apple Liable For Millions In Unpaid Wages After Court Rules Retail Worker Bag Checks Illegal (appleinsider.com) 117

The California Supreme Court in a decision (PDF) delivered on Thursday found Apple broke state law by not paying retail workers for the time they spent participating in mandatory bag and device searches, leaving the company liable for millions in unpaid wages. AppleInsider reports: In a unanimous ruling, the court holds employees were and are in Apple's control during mandatory exit searches of bags, packages, devices and other items. As such, Apple is required to compensate its employees for time spent on the anti-theft program, which in this case allegedly amounted to up to 20 minutes worth hundreds or thousands of dollars a year.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye notes courts should consider a number of factors when evaluating employer-controlled conduct, including location, degree of employer control, benefit to employees and disciplinary consequences. Applying the logic to the current case, "it is clear that plaintiffs are subject to Apple's control while awaiting, and during, Apple's exit searches. Apple's exit searches are required as a practical matter, occur at the workplace, involve a significant degree of control, are imposed primarily for Apple's benefit, and are enforced through threat of discipline," Cantil-Sakauye writes. Apple's policy demands hourly retail employees submit to a search of personal packages and bags at the end of each shift and when clocking out for meal breaks. The checks are performed off-the-clock, meaning workers do not get paid for the mandatory procedure.

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Apple Liable For Millions In Unpaid Wages After Court Rules Retail Worker Bag Checks Illegal

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  • by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @08:49PM (#59726382)

    Screw your workers until you get slapped on the wrist.

    Keep enough balls in the air, and you can juggle it forever.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13, 2020 @09:20PM (#59726468)

      Screw your workers until you get slapped on the wrist.

      Keep enough balls in the air, and you can juggle it forever.

      and meanwhile the upper class management does everything in its power to evade taxes, manipulate and cheat the customers, as well as exploiting their employees and treating them like wage slaves

      keep telling yourself that the upper class isn't the real problem and thanks to them, most of humanity is being unethically deprived

      • unethically deprived?
        Really what are you being deprived of, cell phones, Smart phones, tablets, or macbooks?
        If Apple did not exist you would not have any of their products and what they make available you are free to buy or hate or ignore. But I cannot see how you could be deprived let alone unethically deprived. Is unethically just some sort adjective to you, what about deprived?
        • by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @10:51PM (#59726720)
          They're talking about employees being deprived of fair pay. Some businesses do everything they can to minimize employee costs, even when it's blatantly against the law.
          • What 20 minutes, it seems pretty minor to me one way or the other. In all this it is the same story, you do not have to work for Apple. You can do whatever you want. However I do prefer that my company is paying correctly for the employees I am responsible for. Short someone on their pay and they will not want to work for you for long or happily so kind of stupid policy I would say.
            • by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @11:55PM (#59726862)

              What 20 minutes, it seems pretty minor to me one way or the other.

              Humans are homeostatic systems. If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, 1/3 of an hour of pay is a big deal. Unfortunately, the homeostatic mechanism also seems to prevent people from empathizing with others who have problems of a different scale.

              • What 20 minutes, it seems pretty minor to me one way or the other.

                Humans are homeostatic systems. If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, 1/3 of an hour of pay is a big deal. Unfortunately, the homeostatic mechanism also seems to prevent people from empathizing with others who have problems of a different scale.

                Thats 20 minutes per day, 5 days per week.

              • by I75BJC ( 4590021 )
                Even if you're not living paycheck-to-check, 1/3 of an hour of pay is a big deal.

                This should apply to all employees and not just a certain or "special" class of workers!
                The USA Federal Government does this with some of their employees and permit their Prime Contractors (who do the actual work on many projects and plants/campuses) to do this to their employees. (I have actually seen this happen.)

                I'll bet USA State and Local Governments do the same.
                Hopefully, this ruling will apply to all employers!
            • by Xenx ( 2211586 )
              Well, specifically the AC was talking about the situation as a whole. This particular instance is only one example of this type of behavior.

              As for not having to work for Apple, while that is technically true the problem with that thought is that you have to work somewhere(normally). If you follow that logic to defend Apple, where does it end? If every business that will hire you is going to abuse you, it no longer becomes a meaningful choice where you work. That is literally the very reason we have employ
              • Don't think homeostasis is the right term but kind of. There is a barrier to switching jobs. The cost of the time looking, any difference in how convenient it is to get to, uncertainty in what the work environment will be like, loss of any benefit your seniority at your current job has given you etc. So the problem becomes if the barrier is high enough you can get abused because well, you don't want to eat the cost of leaving.

                Have a friend in that situation, making around 100k as a dev in a market that pays

            • It is roughly 4% of an 8-hour workday.
              It makes the hourly rate seem roughly 4% better at face value than what you actually get for your time spent at work.
              It constitutes intentionally misleading their own employees for profit.
              They are assholes and can go fuck themselves.

              The presumption that emloyees would shy away from an unethical employer if they can does not make said employer any less unethical or deserving of being hung out to dry.

            • by Cederic ( 9623 )

              20 minutes a day, 222 days a year, that's almost two weeks' additional wages every year.

              If you're in the sort of shitty role where they trust you so little that they search you as you leave the premises, you're also earning so little that two weeks' pay is serious money to you.

              Worked there for five years? This payout is worth nearer ten weeks' wages, that's serious money to almost everybody.

            • by spun ( 1352 )

              Here's a better article: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insig... [hklaw.com]

              The searches took 5-20 minutes per day, for which employees were not paid. Let's call it 10 on average. 50 minutes per week. Call it 50 weeks per year, for 2,500 minutes stolen per employee, per year. That's 41 2/3 hours per year. A work week, stolen, per employee.

              Tell me how you wouldn't mind your job stealing a work week from you. Heck, just send me the cash, since it's no big deal.

            • What 20 minutes, it seems pretty minor to me one way or the other.

              Whether it is minor or not is irrelevant. If you want someone to "volunteer" their time without pay that needs to be up to that person.

              Short someone on their pay and they will not want to work for you for long or happily so kind of stupid policy I would say.

              Not at all. The system of pay in place may have nothing to do with the work I do or if I enjoy working for someone. Take it from someone who's been there. I really like my job. I really like my employer. I really enjoy going to work and working with the people I work with. That didn't stop me taking my employer to arbitration due to a pay dispute which I run and then receive

            • You're a great, exploitable worker.

              20 minutes a day. Assume a 50-week work year, five days a week. That's 83 and a third hours of lost pay a year -- an entire paycheck for people if they're paid biweekly.

            • You misunderstand.
              The lawsuit won't make Apple pay their workers.
              It will make apple wait less than 20 minutes to let them go. Because having a guard onsite and ready is cheaper than paying 1 hour wages for every three people working.

              In other words, there's a punishment to keeping your employees waiting around.

        • by tflf ( 4410717 )

          unethically deprived? Really what are you being deprived of, cell phones, Smart phones, tablets, or macbooks?"

          The underlying issues are much deeper than purchasing or refusing to purchase a product, or the decision to work or not work for any company. The foundation for "unethical deprivation: lie, in larger part, in the ongoing demand for more and more special entitlements and exemptions for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Perhaps the most visible current sign of ethical bankruptcy is the ongoing story-line preaching the belief any scheme that increases individual or corporate wealth must be morall

      • by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @09:50PM (#59726544) Homepage Journal

        If you eliminated the entire upper class today...just made them vanish....and let the economy sort itself out, what do you think would happen?

        I will tell you: they would be replaced with a new upper class of people who pull the exact same shenanigans.

        This behavior isn't specific to a particular group of people that just happens to be in power at the moment. It's human nature. It isn't pretty, but it is what people do when they believe they can get away with it. Those who are currently being harmed by these behaviors.....they aren't saints. They would be just the same the moment they had the same incentives.

        I will also add that you can't prevent this by building a system that has no upper class. Any system based on forced equality will require a group of organizers who have more power than the organized; it simply can't function otherwise. Those organizers...they will be every bit as corrupt and tyrannical as the very worst examples human history has to offer. Guaranteed.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @11:39PM (#59726816)

            You're getting awfully close to asking for an optimal resource allocation scheme, which can be trivially shown to be impossible to find in a finite universe. We don't have an oracle (of the mathematical variety) available.

            Sometimes you need to admit that something is a property of reality, and ask why, not, "How do I get around this?"

            If you know the why, frequently, you realize that you don't want to go around it. Like in this case, the consequences are horrific and bloody. So don't go there. Easy, yeah? But only if you can be honest with yourself about the nature of our existence. The universe is an enormous and fascinating place. Stop and smell the roses. Ask why, instead of trying to force some how.

            Back to your question. Capitalism is a resource allocation scheme, and democracy is a process by which we determine the parameters of that scheme. Democracy, as a process, could be applied to any other resource allocation scheme, such as socialism.

            It appears that democracy is a good choice overall for setting the parameters of these schemes, as compared with the success rates of centrally planned systems. However, China is showing serious gains with a centrally planned system using a capitalist resource allocation scheme. It also seems that mixing in some features of a socialist allocation system is necessary for the stability of these systems at scale.

            • You're getting awfully close to asking for an optimal resource allocation scheme, which can be trivially shown to be impossible to find in a finite universe.

              Oh, horse shit, nobody demanded that somebody prove mathematically that a resource allocation scheme was the most perfectest possible, you're responding to an appeal for improvement you fucking ass.

              Nobody even made an attack on capitalism. Read Adam Smith, if you're fully literate. You have no clue what capitalism is if you think it required the rich fucks to do whatever they want; and if you can read, you'd find out that actually is what capitalism is supposed to prevent.

              • I'm not arguing that we should have perfect over good enough. I'm explaining why proposing a better scheme than capitalism for resource allocation is a hard problem. (Aren't we allowed to have hard problems?)

                Nowehere did I attack capitalism or suggest we shouldn't try to improve. I'm really not sure why you seem so set off by my comment. I took a detached, birds-eye view of the problem, and noted a couple major features.

                • You said:

                  Capitalism is a resource allocation scheme, and democracy is a process by which we determine the parameters of that scheme.

                  No. Wrong. False. Capitalism is system whereby if a neutral third party (a Government not itself engaging in trade) peeks over the shoulders of business, and regulates the market so that entrenched participants cannot act or collude so as to disadvantage or exclude new market participants, then a strong and measurable effect called the "invisible hand of the market" will cause resource allocation to self-regulate based on the supply and demand curve. If you just let business do whatever they want,

                  • You're busy conflating resource allocation with political governance.

                    I see why you're confused, and it's all too common.

                    • Nope. Read my words again, but extend the natural presumption that I understood my words.

                      I doubt it helps, but you never know.

                      Again, to reiterate, if you feel yourself conflating resource allocation with political governance, go back to the start, and try again to parse the words so that they make sense. If they don't make sense, you're probably using an unintended definition for one of the words, or parsing a section backwards.

                      Capitalism is not a resource allocation scheme at all. There is no way to confla

          • by PrimaryConsult ( 1546585 ) on Friday February 14, 2020 @02:57AM (#59727182)

            What we have now is regulated capitalism. Apple losing this lawsuit shows that it works, though I would argue the employees should see 5x the shorted pay as a punishment to prevent these kinds of shenanigans being "what's the worst that can happen, we pay what we would have had to pay them anyway? Suckers!"

            Moving the needle too far into the realms of unregulated capitalism, or socialism, results in an unstable system that eventually collapses.

            • The purpose of punishment is not to enrich the employees beyond what was intended, but to recompense them for the value of their time that was lost and a bit more to cover any stress and legal fees. In addition to this, the company needs to be made aware that such behavior in the future is heavily frowned upon. Right now, this is done through fines beyond the scope of the employee compensation, intended to cover the costs incurred by the government regulators. Personally, I think that executive officers of
        • by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @11:53PM (#59726852) Homepage
          And this is why you have a government with courts that make companies that do things that do not follow the law, in this case not paying people for time at work. It is critical in a true democracy that no one or entity is above the law.
          • by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian.bixby@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Friday February 14, 2020 @12:51AM (#59726980)

            Rather wondering how Apple thought they would get away with this, Amazon was made to pay for the time spent in bag searches over a decade ago, and the diamond companies a couple decades before that.

            • by MrBT ( 6610422 )
              You answered your own question: Amazon was slapped on the wrist for this over a decade ago, so Apple's had at least that long to get away with it. When you're a megaconglomerate the size of Apple, this is just the cost of doing business. Fuck your workers until someone finally sues you to stop. Fight it for as long as you can, then appeal the judgement. In the meantime, you're still making a ton of money off your underpaid wage slaves. If/when you finally lose, exert political pressure to have those fines r
        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          It takes more than one generation of culling to completely remove an undesirable trait.

          If you believe it impractical, why not legalize murder, rape, and robbery under the excuse that it's just human nature is won't completely go away?

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Yes everyone will exploit the rules of the system, and break them, in the case of executive level crimes, on a weighing of benefit to cost and likelihood of being caught. Your post makes me think you just want to shrug and let it go on because others would do the same. This is wage theft, and Apple should be fined 20% of their gross revenue, the highest authorizing executive that knew or should have known should be fined 20% of their wealth, then the CxOs and board should all be fined 20% of their wealth. A
        • If you eliminated the entire upper class today...just made them vanish....and let the economy sort itself out, what do you think would happen?

          The new 'upper class' that you refer to would notice the puff of greasy smokey that the old 'upper class' had been transformed into and perhaps rectify their behavior.

          Why do you ask silly questions like this?

        • Also don't underestimate the ability to overlook things when coming up with systems. Some rando that came up with the policy might have just thought bag checks we'll add those takes less than a minute to check a bag so what's the big deal? The pain in the ass for payroll to figure out what they owe when one day it's 4h3m next 4h1m etc instead of just staight 4hrs every day. Etc. The punch clock is in the back room not the front where you have to do the bag check etc etc. All sorts of things.

          But the reality

      • and meanwhile the upper class management does everything in its power to evade taxes, manipulate and cheat the customers, as well as exploiting their employees and treating them like wage slaves

        keep telling yourself that the upper class isn't the real problem and thanks to them, most of humanity is being unethically deprived

        Phil Schiller would argue that it takes "courage" to do all that. ;-)

    • Having dealt with it as an employer, I am amazed by Apple’s stupidity here. The back liability compared to the money saved is huge. You can’t have a non-exempt employee doing anything off the clock “for your benefit.”

      • Many companies solve this problem by providing lockers outside their inventory control perimeter where employees can put their backpacks and purses before they start their shift.

        • by green1 ( 322787 )

          Works ok for warehouses, not so well for retail locations in malls. Even so, pockets can still conceal things, so you end up having to search the people before they get to their bags anyway.

          Either that, or you could simply hire people you trust, pay them enough they don't want to risk their employment, and vigorously prosecute those who are caught. Tends to be even more effective than searches, and leads to much less resentment from your employees resulting in better productivity and lower turnover. I've wo

    • They didn't think they were doing anything wrong. There was a disagreement about that. The judge decided against them. Now they will compensate the workers for the extra time, which is all anyone could ever have reasonably asked for in the first place.

      What is the silly drama about?

      They should have gotten paid for the extra 20 minutes! Yeah, now they will be, for all the past time. Turns out Apple can easily afford it. No exclamation points needed.

      • Will they also be compensated for the clear opportunity cost they paid? (I didn't actually look; don't read it as a counter to your point. I do agree with you, mostly.)

        That's the sort of reason treble damages exist. Merely paying what you would've owed at the time isn't sufficient to repair the harm.

        • Paying what you owe also gives no financial incentive for Apple to try to figure out the right thing to do. In fact it gives them the incentive to do the wrong thing; they would be no worse off if they were made to pay, and there is a finite probability that they would not get caught.
          • by green1 ( 322787 )

            Regardless of being caught, the opportunity cost of money means that paying an amount later is always preferable to paying the same amount sooner. This means that if Apple only has to pay back wages, they win. To make it even (and this is still not a punishment, it just covers the actual losses) they would need to pay the back wages, plus interest at the rate of inflation (or better yet, above inflation at a reasonable investment rate of return)

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Apple will have to pay for the longest time for all employees, some only waited a couple of minutes, now they will be paid for 20 minutes twice a day, for all employees, for every single day they worked. Pretty expensive. Plus their image is damaged, the whole Apple cool thing really tarnished and better workers will start to avoid them because hostile work place. Which means they will start getting worse workers, and those bag checks will be needed but it wont stop questionable employees from smuggling out

        • Expensive, maybe. But pretty cheap compared to what US legal system actually would award as punitive damage.

        • by fgouget ( 925644 )

          Plus their image is damaged, the whole Apple cool thing really tarnished

          I'd agree more with this part if they were forced to publish the judgement prominently on the home page of their website (which is something that can be ordered in some countries). Otherwise it's likely only a sliver of potential customers will know about it.

      • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Friday February 14, 2020 @05:23AM (#59727368) Journal

        What is the silly drama about?

        Apple, one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world tried to screw over low paid employees by making them work for the company for free.

        • by Kohath ( 38547 )

          What is the silly drama about?

          Apple, one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world tried to screw over low paid employees by making them work for the company for free.

          No they didn’t try to screw over anyone. People have normal human interactions. Then a bunch of people make rules. And more rules. And hire lawyers to interpret rules. An then someone like you misunderstands (pretend to misunderstand?) that some rule interpretation disagreement is some great evil. Nope, it's just some stuff that people did. They had a reason. Maybe someone complained — someone always complains no matter what. The dispute was resolved by our society’s method for re

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Didn't think they were doing anything wrong?

        Any time an employer is controlling the actions of an employee they are working for them and must be paid. It's a very old, very simple principal and any employment lawyer worth their salt should have explained it to Apple.

        So either Apple now has a case against their lawyers for giving them obviously stupid advice, or they knew and did it anyway.

        • by green1 ( 322787 )

          Based on what I can tell, despite this rulling, Apple still came out ahead. All they seem to be paying is back wages, with no punitive damages. Opportunity cost of money being what it is, paying the same amount later is always better than paying it sooner.

          Mayve Apple knew what they were doing, but did the math and realized the worst case scenario, even if forced to undo what they had done, would still lead to a positive outcome for them.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @08:52PM (#59726390)

    If it were employees requesting to be paid while they dressed at home that would be one thing, but it does seem like if you show up and are ready to work Apple should not be allowed to deduct the time they take for Apple related company actions like searches.

    A bag search is not that much different than a mandatory meeting.

    • I'm not sure if I'm correct in saying this, I'm speaking mostly as a consumer, not an employee...

      But in Canada for example, mandatory bag to leave a store checking is illegal (You can ask, but the customer is free to leave without). You can for example forbid a customer to walk into a store with a backpack and make them leave it at the front of the store (they are welcome to leave the store without leaving their backpack, but you cannot demand they open their bag when they leave after shopping). I mean al

      • It's illegal in the US for non-membership stores (and IIRC even they can only revoke your membership and ban you from all stores if you refuse), but these aren't customers, so it's about the time required. If your employer requires all employees to submit to a screening on departure, which isn't completely insane in the case of a company that sells a lot of high-value but small items yet employs mostly low-wage workers, then that's part of their job. It's no different from the crap that mining companies did
      • I'm not sure if I'm correct in saying this, I'm speaking mostly as a consumer, not an employee... But in Canada for example, mandatory bag to leave a store checking is illegal (You can ask, but the customer is free to leave without). ...

        I think you missed a point here in the article. What is being discussed is mandatory bag checks for employees, not customers.

    • A bag search is not that much different than a mandatory meeting.

      Except that you could just not bring a bag to work.

      • by socode ( 703891 )
        It's completely reasonable to bring a bag to work and expect the employer to accomodate. People have commitments, travel arrangements, personal goals, and fun stuff to do after work. Good employers would be happy to have their staff happier at near zero cost.
  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday February 13, 2020 @08:54PM (#59726398)

    I would think that an employee caught with something in their bag/backpack while still on the clock and still on the premises couldn't really be accused of stealing (or having stolen) anything, while someone off the clock could (like any, say, customer walking out the store). Then again, IANAL.

    • I would think that an employee caught with something in their bag/backpack while still on the clock and still on the premises couldn't really be accused of stealing (or having stolen) anything

      Sure, and that kid in the store was completely intending to pay for all of those candy bars he'd had put in his pocket. Why would anyone put company property inside of a personal bag? Unless you've got a supervisor that can vouch for whatever far-fetched explanation would surely accompany the discovery of such, the police are getting called and you're almost assuredly going to be out on your ass even if you don't end up in additional trouble.

    • I don't think they could get arrested for stealing, agreed. But I could imagine that there's some rule that says you can't put Apple property in your pockets/backpack/purse, etc. So they could get fired by doing that. But not arrested for stealing. I think they'd have to catch them outside the store.

      By the way, from what I read in the summary, checking the bags is not illegal. Requiring employees to stay, without pay, while their bags are checked is. If you paid them, there'd be no problem.

    • Problem with that assessment is you claim since it hasn't left the building its not stealing when that was what the were intending. If i put say a usb thumb drive in my pocket at best buy. You logic says that if i walk through that scanner and it goes off its still not stealing TIL i go out the door. Its not a matter of issue of leaving the buildings its fact you have it on you with the intent to LEAVED aka trying to steal it. I do agree if you are gonna force employee's to submit to these searches that is
      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        You logic says that if i walk through that scanner and it goes off its still not stealing TIL i go out the door.

        Uh, the scanners are at the door so how do you figure. No, by his logic if you put a USB drive in your pocket at Best Buy and wander over to look at washing machines, the loss prevention team shouldn't jump your ass while looking at Maytag.

        • by Dantoo ( 176555 )

          Where I live, proven "intent" is sufficient. Probably the same where you live as well, maybe not?

          A male found behind behind a warehouse at 2:00 am in a public car park, holding a breaker bar, sack, and lock picking tools can be prosecuted for "intent".
          A group sitting around a table with blueprints of the bank, a map showing a getaway route, and notebook with timings, locations and names can also be prosecuted.
          The same group sitting about simply talking about hijacking a plane can not only be prosecuted but

          • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            Sitting around with bank vault plans is a cornball analogy as people don't commonly walk around with bank vault plans. People do have pockets and use them to put things in.

            Is a customer putting something in a pocket a suspicious act? Of course, no one is suggesting otherwise. But to try and nail them for theft - you kinda half to wait for theft to occur. As in leaving the building with stolen merch.

    • by clovis ( 4684 )

      Courts have long held that if you are in a store and hide products on your person then you can be charged with shoplifting even though you haven't left the store because you have shown intent to steal the product.

      However, it is one of those "it depends" kind of things. For example, if you can make a good claim and get the judge/jury to believe your claim that it was the only way to carry the product, such as you're trying to carry a large watermelon and had to put the bananas in your pocket. But you have t

      • It's probably the "reasonable person" standard.

        A reasonable person would conclude that someone stuffing something valuable in their pants is shoplifting, because there's other ways of carting around store merchandise you intend to buy.

        A reasonable person probably wouldn't think a piece of merchandise visibly hanging out of the back of your pocket while you carry a big piece of merchandise requiring two hands isn't shoplifting.

      • In the case of the Apple employee trying to exit the store with product in his knapsack at the end of the shift, he would have to convince the court that he intended to purchase the product before leaving the store.

        I would think the employee is more likely to use the defence they did not know the product was in their bag, and that someone must have put it there to try and get them in trouble.

    • Of course it is stealing. Being an employee doesn’t mean you can take what you want from the company. This follows the Disney decision where employees must be paid for all the time they were in character and not just only the time they were in front of customers.
    • I would think that an employee caught with something in their bag/backpack while still on the clock and still on the premises couldn't really be accused of stealing (or having stolen) anything, while someone off the clock could (like any, say, customer walking out the store). Then again, IANAL.

      If the bag check is performed in a place where the only reason for being there is to leave the premises then you'd be wrong. Saying "I haven't stepped over this line" is not a defense against stealing when your foot is literally in the air above that line.

  • if you make having an actual person as an employee more expesive using wages and working regs they will just buy more of my robot made robots ;)

    OK I do not make robots ;) lol just a thought about how government is pushing business to automate. As if business needs any pushing.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
    • Automation shouldn't mean everyone has to John Henry themselves. Ultimately it should mean nobody has to work unless they choose to.
    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      It's a popular threat for eroding employee rights and wages now that we have managed to thoroughly crap on the utopian dream of robot labor allowing the humans more leisure time. However, while they have done pretty well on the assembly line, they failed utterly at "unskilled" tasks like cooking burgers, selling things to people and security.

      There was a lot of that talk when the debates were going on about raising the minimum wage. The whopper flopper bot failed in field testing (and turned out to be a lot

  • So, how much will this translate into for Tim Cook, who CNBC reports only took home over $125 million last year [cnbc.com] and could undoubtedly use the compensation for the required searches he must've been subjected to?

  • There were stories that warehouse workers at Amazon had more like an hour wait to get searched as they were leaving their shifts over the holidays

    But I thought amazon managed to win the lawsuit to say it wasnâ(TM)t part of their work hours (which meant they had no incentives to hire more screeners to get people through in a reasonable amount of time)

    • Exactly this. ^^^

      There was a lawsuit and the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Amazon. I suspect the California version will get overturned soon enough.

      https://www.supremecourt.gov/o... [supremecourt.gov]

      or for the TL:DR folks:

      JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

      The employer in this case required its employees, ware-house workers who retrieved inventory and packaged it for shipment, to undergo an antitheft security screen-ing before leaving the warehouse each day. The question presente

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        California has stronger employee rights laws than the Feds and hasn't stacked the deck in their courts to nearly the same degree.

        It would be a huge ask to claim the relevant California law to be un-Constitutional, so I doubt SCOTUS will ever hear an appeal of this.

      • I didn't read the case, but it looks like scotus made a ruling there based on the language of the law. I don't see any reason they would strike down a state law mandating a different accounting from your summary.
      • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        There was a lawsuit and the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Amazon. I suspect the California version will get overturned soon enough.

        That was a decision under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). That is not the sole law governing employment, and states traditionally regulate employment relationships -- the federal government has not attempted to exercise "field premption" in employment law.

        This is a decision under California's statute empowering its Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC).

  • Regardless of the merits of this case...I donâ(TM)t understand why Apple didnâ(TM)t just prohibit the employees from bringing bags to work. Leave your shit at home or in the car or whatever.

    No bags == No bag checks

    • by irving47 ( 73147 )

      You gonna tell the women they can't bring their purses to work?
       

    • by jaa101 ( 627731 )

      I don't understand why Apple didn't just prohibit the employees from bringing bags to work.

      Apple requires employees to wear Apple-branded clothing while at work. Apple requires employees to not wear this Apple-branded clothing outside of work.

      • Apple requires employees to wear Apple-branded clothing while at work. Apple requires employees to not wear this Apple-branded clothing outside of work.

        Can't Apple just require everyone to come and leave nude? There might still be a need for rectal searches, but those should go quicker.

      • What does this have to do with bringing bags to work?

        Carry your t-shirt in your hand.

  • The court didn't rule that the bag checks are illegal. What they DID do was rule that if Apple wanted to do bag checks of employees, they had to do it on company time.

    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      Which will mean either a change in contracted hours, or a change in how many of those hours are spent *working* instead of standing in a queue.

      Of course the bag checks are fine. Plenty of workplaces have bag-checks. Hell, going to the football has bag-checks for everyone who walks through.

      But you can't do it, take HOURS doing it, and expect people to just suffer it.

      And if you want your shops to be open 9-5, or whatever, then you're going to have to pay people 8-6 and write that into their contract - and h

      • And if you want your shops to be open 9-5, or whatever, then you're going to have to pay people 8-6 and write that into their contract - and have everyone sign the new contract.

        In .us, very few people actually have an employment contract.

  • Make better hiring choices. I've worked retail, never been searched. The very idea is silly. Don't hire people if you suspect they'll steal from you. If you can't trust anyone not to steal from you, either go work for the CIA or find a therapist.
  • Unfortunately.

    There was a basically same case, where workers in an Amazon fulfillment center were robbed of their salaries, and the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the workers.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/business/supreme-court-rules-against-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html


    Supreme Court Rules Against Worker Pay for Screenings in Amazon Warehouse Case

    By Adam Liptak

    Dec. 9, 2014

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that a temp agency

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