The U.S. Nationwide Labor Relations board accused Apple of interfering with employees’ rights to collectively advocate for higher working situations by limiting their use of social media and office messaging app Slack, the company mentioned on Friday.
The NLRB grievance, issued on Thursday, accuses the iPhone maker of sustaining illegal work guidelines across the acceptable makes use of of Slack, illegally firing an worker who advocated for office modifications on Slack, requiring one other employee to delete a social media publish, and creating the impression that staff have been being surveilled by way of social media.
That is the second time the NLRB has hit Apple with a grievance this month. Final week, the company accused the corporate of requiring staff nationwide to signal unlawful confidentiality, nondisclosure, and noncompete agreements and of imposing overly broad misconduct and social media insurance policies.
Apple in a press release supplied by a spokesperson on Friday mentioned it’s dedicated to sustaining “a constructive and inclusive office” and takes worker complaints significantly.
“We strongly disagree with these claims and can proceed to share the details on the listening to,” the corporate mentioned.
In response to final week’s grievance, Apple denied wrongdoing and mentioned it respects its staff’ rights to debate wages, hours and dealing situations.
If Apple doesn’t settle with the NLRB, an administrative decide will maintain an preliminary listening to within the case in February. The decide’s resolution may be reviewed by the five-member labor board, whose rulings may be appealed in federal courtroom.
The brand new case stems from a grievance filed with the NLRB practically three years in the past by Janneke Parrish, who says Apple fired her in 2021 for enjoying a lead function in worker activism.
Parrish used Slack and public social media shops to advocate for everlasting distant work, distribute a pay fairness survey, element alleged intercourse and race discrimination at Apple and publish open letters important of the corporate, in accordance with the brand new grievance.
Slack, which permits employees to create group conversations, was rolled out a number of years in the past at Apple and have become more and more standard as a dialogue discussion board through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NLRB grievance says Apple has a coverage barring employees from creating new Slack channels with out permission from managers. Posts about office issues should be directed to a supervisor or a “Folks Help” group, in accordance with the grievance.
Parrish’s lawyer, Laurie Burgess, mentioned in an electronic mail on Friday that Apple had engaged in “intensive violations” of employees’ rights.
“We stay up for holding Apple accountable at trial for implementing facially illegal guidelines and terminating staff for partaking within the core protected exercise of calling out gender discrimination and different civil rights violations that permeated the office,” Burgess mentioned.
The grievance seeks an order requiring Apple to rescind its allegedly illegal insurance policies and reimburse Parrish for misplaced earnings and different monetary impacts of her firing.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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