Technical Editor: Zong En by the Editorial Department

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A US court has again ruled that Apple must pay its retail service employees for the time they take to undergo a thorough examination before they leave its stores. You might say, well, I don’t remember this happening, but yes, Apple has been fighting this issue with its employees for seven years.

For a long time, when Apple Store employees finished their shifts and were ready to leave, they had to wait in line for a “full check” to prevent an employee from sneaking out merchandise. Employees are also expected to follow the rules if they want to leave the store during breaks, which can take 10 to 15 minutes, and sometimes as much as 45 minutes, according to an employee at an Apple store. Apple is supposed to pay for this time, but the company doesn’t mention paying for it.

It’s not just Apple employees who face this problem. In 2013, Amazon employees filed a lawsuit to order the company to pay for the “search time,” which was ultimately dismissed.

In the Amazon case, the Supreme Court ruled that since Amazon warehouse workers were not hired for security inspection purposes, this was not actually part of their pay. The court ruled that employees could not be billed for time the company spent on security issues.

Inspired, Apple employees appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in California until a final ruling this year ordered the company to pay them back for the lost time. Apple immediately appealed and won, so the employees appealed again……

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said Apple must pay more than 12,000 retail workers in California to spend time conducting security checks at the end of their shifts.

A three-judge panel overturned the earlier decision…… after the California Supreme Court said in February that it was reimbursable based on the litigability costs of the case after it said it had responded to questions about the case’s adjudication

Dennis Young Smith, Apple’s head of human resources, said the company needed to be “smarter and more respectful”. Cook said only that he was shocked. Apple’s approach to this is clearly wrong. If the company is asking employees to stay in the company for any reason, then that time is company time, not personal time.

Mr Cook should immediately accept the ruling, apologise to the staff and announce that Apple will pay all staff up front for their time spent on search. Of course, it’s not practical to calculate each employee individually. Instead, you should take an average and pay employees on that basis.

When Novel Coronavirus broke out, Apple was the first to close stores and continue to pay employees for extended vacation days. But the funny thing is that they’re haggling over the few dollars their employees have to wait for after work. If it’s not part of the job, as Amazon claims, can an employee cross the security line? I think the best thing Apple can do right now is either set aside a portion of their daily security check time during their working hours or pay them right away, otherwise the expected fees will get higher……