Full FeedStill think working for Apple would be like heaven?
Sometimes at night I have a dream that I work for Apple. I see myself being best buds with Steve, him showing me all the secret iphone nanos and aluminum MacBooks, and letting me test them. Of course, this dream probably couldn’t be further from the truth for most Apple employees. A lawsuit has been filed against Apple, claiming the company has violated California State law by denying overtime pay and meal benefits to many of its IT workers.
The article that appeared in Information Week about the suit describes working conditions similar to “indentured servitude.”
David Walsch, according to the suit, was forced to work in excess of 40 hours weekly, skip meals, and spend evenings and entire weekends on call for no extra compensation. On call means he would have to answer the phone any time his help was needed in fixing a problem.
“The technical support calls often came in past 11:00 o’clock at night,” disrupting Walsh’s sleep, according to the suit.
The way Apple got around paying extra for all of this, was by misclassifying certain employees as managers, to avoid any overtime laws.
Apple “intentionally and deliberately created numerous job levels and a multitude of job titles ... to create a roadblock to discovery and class certification for all employees similarly classified as exempt,” court papers say.
I’m deeply saddened by this article, though I’ve long suspected Apple of having less than golden hallways. Apple needs to get their picture together and treat their employees much better. These are the people who really make the magic happen behind so many of our favorite gadgets and programs, and they need to be treated as such. I hope that as with the recent MobileMe disaster, Apple can continue taking responsibility for their mistakes.
Via [Information Week]
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Horrible if it’s true. Steve kind of has a “hothead” reputation in the technology industry, although you would never know it from the way he acts in public. For all the people who have called him a hothead though, there have been people with nothing but good things to say about him, so it remains a mystery like everything else at Apple.
And based on your dream, I’d say that your obsession with Steve is not healthy :)
on August 7, 2008 at 12:13 AM - LINK“...though I’ve long suspected Apple of having less than golden hallways. “
They’re not golden… they’re brushed aluminum!
on August 31, 2008 at 04:06 AM - LINK