Apple Genius Employees File Class Action Lawsuit

Apple retail employees have filed a class action lawsuit against the company over unpaid wages and alleged mistreatment. The class action lawsuit, which was filed last September, covers all current and former Apple employees in hourly paid “Genius Bar” positions from September 15, 2005 to the conclusion of the trial.

According to the class action lawsuit, Apple has had “a consistent policy” of denying Genius employees statutorily-mandated rest periods as required by law. “In addition, although [Apple is] aware that Geniuses are not being permitted to take breaks, they have failed and refused to compensate Geniuses for missed rest breaks.”

The class action lawsuit also claims Apple fails to pay terminated employees in a prompt and timely manner and fails to provide accurate semimonthly itemized wage statements indicating the total number of hours they worked, the applicable deductions and the applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period. “Apple has, for years, knowingly failed to properly compensate Class Members for all hours worked on its behalf,” the lawsuit claims. By failing to provide employees an accurate, detailed wage statement, “Apple has not only failed to pay its employees the full amount of compensation due,” but it has also “shielded itself from its employees’ scrutiny” by concealing the “magnitude” of the financial impact employees are receiving from not being paid for missed rest breaks.

The class action lawsuit is asking that class members be compensated one hour for each workday that a rest period was due but not provided. For more information, visit appleemploymentclassaction.com.

UPDATE: Since our post, an Apple Genius who has worked for Apple for years contacted us with some inside information on the situation. He says the Genius Bar computer system schedules 15-minute time slots per customer for the Apple Genius to speak with, but doesn’t schedule breaks. Over the past one to two years, Apple has asked managers to use one of those 15-minute time slots as a break for the Genius, but the managers often forget to schedule it. When Geniuses clock out of the system at the end of their shift they receive a pop-up message telling them to contact HR if they didn’t receive a break, but most employees don’t bother because they risk being “blacklisted” with their management team.

It seems Apple has been aware of the missed break problem for at least a couple years, but has only made a mediocre attempt to fix the problem. Even in the midst of a class action lawsuit, Apple still hasn’t instituted automatic break scheduling into their Genius scheduling program. It seems like an easy fix to us.