“Apple Store employees who sued Apple Inc. over bag searches at the iPhone maker’s 52 brick and mortar outlets in California had their case certified as a class-action by a federal judge on Thursday,” Dan Levine reports for Reuters.
“The ruling, from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, is part of a 2013 lawsuit alleging Apple should compensate thousands of store employees for the time taken to search their bags to ensure they did not steal any merchandise,” Levine reports. “Lawsuits certified as class actions allow plaintiffs to sue as a group and generally give them more leverage to negotiate a settlement. Class members in the bag search case include more than 12,000 current and former employees, the ruling said.”
“Plaintiffs Amanda Frlekin and Dean Pelle alleged that “screenings” or bag searches, designed to discourage theft, are conducted every time sales reps leave the store, including for meal breaks,” Levine reports. “Apple had argued in court filings that the case was not suitable for class action status because not all store managers conducted bag searches, and any searches that did occur took a tiny amount of time which don’t deserve compensation. Alsup ruled that those issues could be litigated at trial.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: On December 9, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark 9-0 decision holding that employees’ time spent waiting for and undergoing security screening after their shifts have ended is not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
9-0.
More info here.
Just because SCOTUS rules that FSLA doesn’t apply here does NOT give a company the right to retain you daily without pay.
I could see if it were in conjunction with a witness or other reason to be suspicious, but as part of an everyday routine, no, they should be paid, just as most places (that I know of) pay while routine drug test are being conducted.
This is just a no-brainer to me.
Step up, Apple.
It’s a free country. If you don’t want to be searched, you find a new job or leave all your belongings off site. Employee theft is a fact of life and a major cost.
@Pridon, you did not read the article. The employees are not complaining about being searched. They are complaining about waiting in line to be searched and not being paid for their time. How would you like to be paid for 8 hours of work each day, but to have to be at work for 8-1/2 hours of work each day. Over the course of a year, you would be cheated out of 130 hours (over 3 weeks) of pay.
No one is requiring them to bring something into the work place that will need to be searched. A LOT of people do not bring purses or backpacks or other such items to work. You don’t want to take the time to be searched? Then don’t bring those items to work.
@Shadowself you just don’t get it. People can leave purses, backpacks and lunch boxes outside, but they still have to stand behind their co-workers and wait in line just to be allowed to go home. Their workday is done; they’re not being paid; but they’re not allowed out of the building until they get to the front of the line.
Most places of employment are susceptible to employee theft.
It is part of the overhead for operations. You budget for it and the measures to stop it. Apple is no different in this regard.
Yes! I want the right to walk into an Apple Store as an employee with a huge bag and not be stopped to look into it. If I want a ‘smoke’ break and have to go into my bag, I don’t want anybody checking my movements because a smoke break is MY time, right? Employers need to pay me to take care of personal business too like my phone calls to friends, arranging my vacations, goofing off and other important ‘union stuff’. How dare they expect me to do only what they pay me for. I deserve free stuff out of the company stores.
Really TowerTone? You are the type of employee that I try not to hire and also get rid of in the first two weeks.
Where do you get off calling yourself ‘reality’ when you can’t even understand written words without adding your silly perspective to it?
Anyhow, I had no idea they still allowed people to smoke in California….(tobacco, that is).
@TowerTone – I am in agreement with you if you are advocating that the employee quitting time is the time when they must present themselves for a security scan plus the time taken for a security scan. By the way you write though, you seem to have an attitude of entitlement where the employee is there only to collect wages and it is up to the employer to try to get them to do some useful work.
I would like to see employees who understand that they are there to sell their labour and to get a fair wage for their output. Unions seem to hold the first scenario as the epitome of ‘work’. Where do you stand?
Yeah, you kind of went off on the deep-end there. I never said anything like you imagined (padded votes or not….).
Read it again; Security is part of a business’s overhead and NOT the employees responsibility, although they must understand deterrents are necessary, just not at their expense.
In other news….I hate the TSA.
Oh, and don’t worry, I won’t be applying at the MacDonald’s you manage….
I tried really hard, but I can’t find a sane opinion in that statement.
There is no opinion in it. Most places simply do not search their employees after hours.
Does yours?
I have worked (and occasionally still work) in areas where you have to go through an “entrapment” to get to your job site. Basically, you have to go through a secure area where you are “trapped” before you can enter the secure area. You go through the same process leaving the secure area. Sometimes it is a minute or soto get through the system, sometimes while the guards check things out it can be many minutes.
Should the employer (the U.S. Government in most of these sites or a major defense contractor in the rest of these sites) pay us for that time each and every day for going through that system? It has never happened and likely will never happen.
Drug tests are a completely different class of event. They do not take a minute or less. They are often done off site. They are done in a separate area/room. To check someone’s purse or backpack takes 10s of seconds at most. Someone saying that they need to be compensated for that 5-10 minutes (at most) per week is purely asinine.
And I have worked in jobs similar (industrial construction) where you are checked BEFORE you brass out, either by random or because you look like you might be ‘carrying’.
As far as I am concerned, once you are off the clock, your employer has no right over your movement, and if is only for a few moments, then JUST PAY FOR IT!
TowerTone – I agree that workers should be paid for the time. However, the SCOTUS disagreed strongly and set a very recent precedent. The facts of this case are essentially the same as the precedent-setting case. As much as I find it distasteful, the district court should have rejected this suit outright.
Just because SCOTUS ruled 9-0 based on the FLSA, a federal law, does not mean that Apple is in compliance with California state law. Wage theft is a big problem in the United States. Companies have teams of low wage workers who do not get paid for all of the time that they give to their employers.
Judge Alsup is a Federal judge, this isn’t a California case.
Federal judges regularly try cases in which the cause of action includes state law. Bryan is right – it sounds like the class action here is based on state law, but being tried in federal court because the plaintiffs and the defendant are not all in the same state, so the plaintiffs have the right to bring the case in federal court.
Based on the comments here, very few people have any comprehension left of the english language and what words mean when put into some form of a sentence..
More than likely they are going to lose.. The exaggerations of how much time these people had to wait to have their bags inspected is ridiculous, chances are none of them waited to leave more than minute.. There aren’t that many people in an Apple Store that would be scheduled to leave all at the same time..
As has been noted numerous times, if they don’t bring items into work that require being searched, they probably walk right out.. You can make excuses as to why people need to do that, but there are still other options that would allow most people from having to carry a searchable bag into a work location where a search is required.
Many retail locations search bags employee bags routinely, and more than likely they’ve all checked out for the day. I doubt that any search takes more than 10-15 seconds..
There are piles of evidence indicating that employees are the main source of theft, this would probably not be happening, if people just tried simple honesty, and employee theft plummeted, so would the need to search.
And apparently that lack of understanding the written word extends to you.
I know of no one who could argue that reasonable searches are not needed just as random drug test when there are safety concerns. The idea in both is to save the company money in the long run by discouraging theft and drug use.
Do people have to pay for the drug test to prove they are innocent?
No (except in extenuating circumstances), so why should the employee have to pay for theft deterrent with their time?
It is not the amount of time that is in question, but who is responsible for the cost.
Should customers be randomly searched after leaving the supermarket?
Maybe trackers on our cars for cops to randomly pull us over and see if we have done ANYTHING wrong, from loud music to temporary speeding to get away from some cracked out driver to eating a burger, “Oh my…do you know how many persons are injured/maimed/killed every year from the small infraction you just committed? Let me pull some fact out of my ass that you better not dare argue with…10 gazillion!!!! I have all the info in my brand new $80,000 rolling courthouse. Sorry, but we are cracking down on whatever you did wrong (as if they were irresponsible up to that point in enforcing some law)”.
The Libertarian hairs on my neck stand up when I see stories like this (the non-grey ones…). I am sick to death of personal liberty being shit on constantly, as if everybody is considered a criminal until proven otherwise with some type of monetary exchange.
We are treated like cattle at the airport, pigs by our justice system, and sheep by employers. I am tired of the DOGS controlling morality….
No, I understand perfectly, you just don’t want get it.. You obfuscate by saying lets search customers, and in some stores, that probably happens if a security cam catches them dropping merchandise into bag or something else they are carrying.. Then you blow it out of proportion with a example of trackers for cars.. and other lame examples… get real your lost in lala land..
Apple has a right to insure that very expensive small items they carry do not walk out of their stores because of employees that may want to steal something to make an extra $$,
I don’t know if Apple always did searches from the beginning, if they did, they wanted to minimize losses, if they didn’t, then obviously they started seeing inventory loss that they could not attribute to customers.. so searches started..
If I worked for a place that required everything I carry to be examined before I leave, so be it.. I chose to work there. The checks still probably only take seconds.. easily avoided by not bringing bags requiring a search into work, the whole issue is being blown out of proportion, by people the likes of you… (TowerTone)
And…..you still can’t read.
If searches are required, fine. Do them on company time.
Blowing something out of proportion is the richest company in the world making their employees get searched on their own time.
What part of that is too hard for you to grasp?
Were you this adamant when it was Wal-Mart having managers do work off the clock? Do you get searched after you clock out?
It used to be that clear line were drawn between acceptable and wrong behavior, but now everything is so blurred to make it easier for some while causing problems for the rest. Thanks for playing your part.
If you hire good people and pay them a decent wage, theft should not be a super big concern. My understanding is Apple pays retail staff well, gives a generous benefits package and a decent discount on gear.
I realize there are a few who would steal everything but a hot stove, but HR should be able to screen them out long before an offer is extended.
I would prefer they only check bags on people where there is probable cause, but it is not my candy store.
This judge must be a dumb ass since the Supreme Court ruled on this issue already. I’ll say again that this whole issue is bogus. When I was an Apple retail employee, I was subjected to bag checks too. I didn’t care. I understood that this was necessary if I insisted on bringing personal items with me to work. As long as I didn’t have a bag to check there was no issue. These employees should just quit and stop whining if this is really that important to them. They need to learn that life isn’t always convenient. We can’t sue everyone who makes things inconvenient for us. If we could, I’ve got a long list of companies to go after. I hope this lawsuit totally fails.