Four former retail and corporate Apple employees who filed a lawsuit against the over labour violations managed to “upgrade” their lawsuit to class-action status.
The status was awarded because it was believed that more than 20,000 current and former Apple employees were harmed by Apple’s management antics.
The four people who originally filed the suit had different experiences with Apple, saying the company violated California’s Labour Code and Wage Orders with its actions. These included making people work long hours without a break and receiving their paycheques late.
It has taken years to get the case to court as Apple has been fighting tooth and nail with voluminous briefing and lengthy oral arguments.
In the end however the California Superior Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion and certified the case as a class action, appointing Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs’ counsel (Hogue & Belong) as the class representatives and class counsel on behalf of approximately 20,000 Apple employees.
Apple now faces claims of meal period, rest period and final pay violations affecting approximately 20,000 current and former Apple employees, rather than just four.
It is not clear how much cash this is going to cost Apple if it is found guilty as no financial demand has been made in the case.
It has been a bad time for Apple lately which has just been told by a court that its long-standing policy of locking in staff using no-poaching agreements with other companies was illegal.
Apple alongside co-conspirators Google, Intel and Adobe agreed to settle for $324 million with the tech workers who filed the class action.
