“The iPhone 4S arrives in Italy today – along with another 22 countries – and the Italians are so into it, they are apparently standing in orderly lines to get it,” Nicole Martinelli reports for Cult of Mac.
“Outside the Roma Est store in the country’s capital, however, Apple employees went on strike,” Martinelli reports. “The unidentified leader in this video from blog iSpazio says they have decide to “strike different” – as their banner and T-shirts say – because they have asked store management to meet a series of demands, but management met with them once and then refused to keep talking.”
Martinelli reports, “Checking out the union page referenced on their T-shirts, demands include asking for more sales staff due to high store traffic, a monthly fixed bonus scheme for all of €200 (about $280) since employee duties are often mixed and limiting video surveillance to safety and loss prevention instead of tracking employees.”
Read more in the full article here.
Yep. Sounds like Italy.
Cook will fire them so fast their head will spin…guaranteed.
I’d been there last week. Worst Apple Store I’d been.
I’m ashamed to be Italian!
You mean former Apple Retail Store employees.
How about granting them the right to go work somewhere else?
My thoughts exactly
“Your future with Apple is … outside the company. Here’s a job application for the Microsoft store across the piazza. Give ’em hell.”
Be glad you have a job. Get back to work, you bums.
Extortion like this shouldn’t help the causes; however, Apple would do well to just settle it ASAP before more stores join in the fun. Apple can’t win the public opinions with quick replacements (and good luck with that on short notice). Besides, to be honest, the demands don’t seem that outrageous to me. I think, the local managers could have done a better job by at least seeing this coming.
Wrong. They want video surveillance limited to loss prevention and safety but not tracking employees. Sorry, but keeping an eye on employees is a big part of loss prevention. Nothing hurts a business faster than employees using the 5 finger discount.
And they want a FIXED monthly “bonus” scheme. The definition of a bonus is something extra, something earned for outstanding work performance. A fixed monthly “bonus” is just more salary. They should not get a bonus unless they’ve earned it.
Finally, while there may be justification for needing more staff, you can only have so much staff otherwise you run out of room to have customers or for staff members to operate. If the Italian store is staffed anything like the Apple Stores I’ve been in in the U.S., staffing is not a problem. In that case, it would be staff laziness if they feel too overwhelmed.
The minute one store employee’s start demanding more then what other employees receive, expect to get your ass fired.
Can’t win “public opinion”, bull. It would be easy to show how these ungrateful bastards are trying to get more then anyone else.
“You are the weakest link”, goodbye.
Italy will shortly follow Greece down that dark hole.
When will people learn that if a bonus is guaranteed, then it’s not actually a bonus?
+1,000
Another thing they need to learn is that many people will never eat at a given restaurant twice if the owners add a preset gratuity to the bill. There’s nothing so insulting as getting taxed extra for lame service.
oh that pisses me off.
a restaurant had a preset tip already in my bill…. and then had a spot for me to ADD more.. the preset part was about as much as i would have tipped anyway.
instead of leaving it blank.. I put a big 0 there. they gave me a dirty look when they saw it.
and no, have not been back.
Tell em man
In some countries, that is standard.
Then the wait staff learned about tips, and then they expect that on top of the fixed gratuity.
Yet in some countries (Australia), tips are considered rude.
The first and only time I went to an Outback Steakhouse (a US chain), the waitress is going on about how they offer a genuine Australian dining experience. So I asked her if it would be OK not to tip, because that would be rude. You should have seen the look of mortification on her face!
In Australia, wait staff are actually paid a decent starting wage, unlike Canada and the US where many places pay wait staff below minimum wage and they’re expected to make it up in tips.
Actually – in my experience – wait staff here in Oz “very much like” tips. I have yet to have a wait person give a tip back. In fact whenever, I return to a restaurant, the people who served me previously do extra to get more tips. Money is a motivator. And I have yet to have a person working in a restaurant here in Oz tell me that they want to make working in a restaurant their life’s work. Don’t be fooled about wage, it is about how cheap Aussies are. There is a wee bit of the Scot and Irish here.
As for the Apple employees in Italy, if they worked for me; they no longer would be. Nuff said.
And if you want to have a real study in Union action and how disruptive it can be – have a look at the extortion that the unions are applying to QANTAS because the unions are being treated so unfairly. The mgmt isn’t hurting by these stupid ash wholes – only us travellers. If anything has ever put me off unions, it is this experience with the air “service” here in Oz. Even customs is striking now. What a load of bull$hit!
Why all of the acrimony? Because the line workers and baggage handles want to be paid the same amount as the CEO of the company. And you can’t fire them. What a load.
cause people think they are entitled to it.
people who strike annoy the hell out of me, you walk off the job and complain (right or wrong) and basically tell the employer “pay me more and i’ll come back to work”
you walk off the job, your employer should be able to hire someone to replace you.
there is always someone that would love to have your job. even in a good economy there is still unemployment, and people who would replace their current job with yours…
I don’t know – why not ask some American banks?
Or HP, for that matter.
Gee, I would have never guessed that in a socialist country such as Italy, employees are DEMANDING more than management is willing to pay.
Gee, if they don’t like the deal they are getting from Apple, they should go where they can get want they want.
What a novel idea. But then Italy is on the same credit shit list as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, all of which have a socialist (government takes care of you) attitude.
You forgot the U.S. on your list of countries with socialist attitudes.
Noooooo, nothing like those European countries. We seem to have more and more people who want the government to take care of them (see the Occupy Wall Street crowd, who just wants the government to play Robin Hood), but we’re nothing like some of the Old World countries in what people expect.
while some of the citizens want socialism, and some elected are trying to go that route.. Like Bizlaw said, we are nowhere near Europe.
headed in that direction, but not even close.
I am really not sorry to inform you that the USA is not headed in the direction of Europe. If it were it would not owe the rest of the world (starting with china, Japan, Germany etc) Trillions of Dollars. Who cares if it is Government or private debt. At some point it will need to be paid. Oh and how is your hospital/medical system, your education system, your legal system, your asset infrastructure faring. I’ll tell you, it’s shit!!. The USA once a proud leader may soon find itself heading more towards irrelevance, both politically and economically (already being basically bankrupt). Get of your arses, stop thinking you are still in your glory days and start repairing from the top down. Oh and by the way I am not European.
Well said.
US-ers should like at some numbers, like infant mortality, academic scoring, life expectancy, HEALTH expectancy, poverty rates, self-reporting of satisfaction and happiness by citizens, etc. The US is way down the ranking table in all of these factors. And no, tea-partiers, the figures didn’t take a dive when Obama came in.
it’s been going down since Unions got more and more control over the workforce.
hell, read Job’s Bio… even he saw it (being a lefty and all)
the life expectancy part… think about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
78 years, and in 36th, 82 being top.
now look at what we do more than the rest of the world… smoke, drink, skydive, travel, etc.
“Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.”
that would be not a government problem… but a problem on the personal/society side. My God… we invented and perfected Fast Food… instead of cooking a healthy meal, we work all day and stop at McDonald’s on the way home. it’s easier to be lazy.
also have to look at population, a country with 1 million people will generally have a better life expectancy rate than one with 300 million.
poverty rates… not even close there buddy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty
if you think there is rampant poverty in the US… go visit a 3rd world country.
even the poor in the US are “rich” compared to much of the rest of the world. Our poor sure know how to complain about their Cable bills though.
Right you fucking are.
No Gregg, Ireland does not have a socialist government. The current government is not socialist and neither was the last one.
Irish Dude, what do you believe to know? Certainly it’s a socialist government. Like in all other European countries. As long as it is not run by a Tea Party style government it is socialist.
Don’t try to teach the American Majority, they know better. Well educated by Fox News.
Nice barstool rant!
And like most of those, opinions are conflated with facts, both made up on the spot as needed.
Stick to drinking and barstool quarterbacking.
The manager hired a poor mix of employees and treated them in such a way as to stir up these sentiments. Fire the lot of them and start again Tim.
Tim should fire the managers, not the poor guys that went on-strike for a bad management team
Don’t forget that the best performers of RomaEst Apple Store went on strike
totally agree! The store leader for example is the wrong person in the wrong place.
Be glad you have a job! You don’t have to work in dirt, mud, poop, radioactivity, digging ditches, cleaning pee pee, sex slave for a senior citizen and worse off them all…a MS Store Employee!
you wrote a ridiculous post
be ashamed
poor people fight for their human rights,
Apple employes in a Apple Store don’t earn good money.
Apple uses them and gives them very little money.
Those workers are the best performers of the store and had been working 5 years in that store.
With their efforts Apple earned hundreds of millions of dollars and opened new stores in Italy.
And when it came to choose new managers for the new stores nobody looked at them.
Apple is not grateful.
No move up in careeer, no money, no benefits, nothing.
Only working for the Apple’s sake.
This is unfair.
This is due to a bad management job of the mangers of apple Italia.
If you don’t like your job. Quit. No one is forcing you to work there. Bunch of lazy “I’m entitled for what I want because I am a spoiled human being” spoiled brats.
Unions are what put the EU in the fix it’s in. Apple must have been forced to employ union shirkers. Dumb!
They should quit and become garbagemen. It Italy, that’s the same as being retired with a pension. I’ve never seen such a filthy so-called “developed” country. Italy: Take out your trash, figure out what a landfill is, and then you can worry about having to work in beautiful stores with even more beautiful tech.
Fire them and let them work in the Microsoft stores.
The problem is, in Italy (just like anywhere else in Europe) it’s forbidden by law to track employees through video surveillance. Just like a two years warranty is mandatory for electronic stuff and Apple still gives one year only.
I’m an Apple fanboy, a true one, but why should Apple have some rights that no other company or individual has?
typical lazy itai bums
they’re not lazy, they’re the best performers of the Store.
The received tons of promises… never fulfilled
“DEMANDS include asking for more sales staff due to high store traffic, a monthly fixed bonus scheme for all of €200 (about $280) since employee duties are often mixed and limiting video surveillance to safety and loss prevention instead of tracking employees.”
Would these little brats like to run the company?
It’ s funny to read a bunch of americans which don’ t almost anything about the real living in the southern European countries, except the few that came here in hollydays.
First compare the prices at Apple stores, and then figure that the average salary on those countries is €14.000/year, and almost 50% go to pays taxes, the other half is to try to live here with that small amount.
Compare that with your country and think honestly if you could live there and renew your iPhones, like you do with this!
We use to say that is not polite to discuss about we don’t have acknowledge.
Best regards from Portugal.
And here we thought that only America matters…
Correction: “It’ s funny to read a bunch of americans which don’t know almost anything about the real life in the southern European countries, except the few that came here in hollydays.”
First of all blame your politicians not Apple. Second as an American who has resided in Italy for many years I understand the system. Come over here and try to see a doctor without pulling out a credit before you’ve walked through the door, try to live on a waiter’s wages, or someone working in a department store with no benefits here, take a look at how many poor people there are in our own backyard that earn the equivalent or even less than that with children to feed. Come over here and look at the people who do have jobs and don’t earn enough and hold 2 jobs and trying to survive. They will do anything to earn an honest living while paying taxes according to their income. What do they get nothing. What do they have Self-Respect! No one forces people to buy an Apple product. Like anything else, you buy what you can afford. Apple should not be faulted for whatever gripes the Italians have. Why should they feel entitled to more when over here I doubt very much if they complain about what they are earning and what they deserve just because Apple is Apple? If you don’t like working there or any place else quite. This is not the land of “entitlement’.
I was at an Apple store recently to pick up another power adapter for my new 4S on launch day. I bought mine at a carrier to get a smaller queue. At the Apple store I can tell you there were people everywhere wanting service and not enough staff. No one knew where to wait or how to catch the eye of a member of staff. It was just like being in a pub… A right free-for-all… People were just getting crosser and crosser! Me included. More staff on launching this product would have been much appreciated.
and apple hires “temp” workers to handle the extra load, then lets them go after a month or so. and then apple catches shit from the media for “downsizing”.
Perspective
If only these striking Italian Apple Store employees would notice that Italy is one of the bankrupt countries ruining the European Union. This is as intelligent as Greek citizens protesting austerity measures from the government they themselves have managed to bankrupt.
Perspective: You have a job. It’s a good job. Icing on top makes you fat and diabetic. Grow up.
Italy has some of the strongest labor laws but they also ha e created huge problems. My sister and husband owned a business over there and had a bad employee who couldn’t do his job. If they fired him they would still have to pay his wages for another year, even if he got another job.
This allows workers to extort money from their employers because it’s way too expensive to fire someone.
And because of their high taxes, a lot of people work for cash and do underhanded business to just get by.
In Italy, there is no middle class. You are either rich or poor.
You see, when you give workers too many rights who do not own the business or are not in charge of it, then you make it a lot harder for businesses to grow and expand so that there is natural competition to raise labor rates.
Italy is dying economically and reform is practically impossible because of so many entrenched rights.