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Apple Agrees to Improve Working Conditions for Retail Employees Amid Unionization Efforts
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Unless of course the company can pay all the employees $70,000, but still return the investment to investors then the stock won't collapse and SEC won't get involved.
Like I said, no restrictions. People to answer to? Sure, but as long as they can still pay shareholders, they can pay the employee whatever they want. But they don't due to corporate greed( managements own money is tied to the stock price.....) and shareholder greed.
Airlines are another example of this..... They had years of record profits and they sent those profits to buyback shares which increases stock price, etc yet left them extremely vulnerable financially. Management is completely focused on stock prices instead of running the company. Stock prices should rise because the company is performing well, not due to manipulation like share buy backs or a tweet by a certain CEO......
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I've avoided responding to you before this, but you have laid bare your economic ignorance with this post. You know what would happen if we did those three things? The economy would explode with positive growth. It would not cause rampant inflation. We have seen what a mostly unfettered free market can do. It has created the largest wage gap since the gilded age in this country. We have also seen what happens when you do the things you have listed as harmful, because they are happening in just about every other wealthy nation on the planet. They have created strong economies and raised the quality of life. Look at every measure of life, liberty, and happiness that is conducted globally and the United States fall far too low on those lists, and yet we are the wealthiest nation in the world. The problem is that our wealth is concentrated in a very small, and continuously shrinking, percentage of our society.
Everything you have posted in this thread either lacks empathy for your fellow human beings, demeans them, or is simply not connected to the truth or reality. Try to open your mind to other possibilities. Do some research and look at what is possible in the world. Do you think your sole purpose in life is to work? It seems so based on your responses. We should be working so that we can enjoy our lives. We only get to live once, and if we sacrifice the overwhelming majority of our time on this planet to work, then we will have missed the point.
4 weeks vacation is 7.5% of the total year. This means that the person who received 4 weeks of vacation will dedicate 92.5% of their year to working. And you act like this is crazy. 4 weeks isn't even enough for the minimum. It is 6 weeks in Germany. You've heard of Germany, right? Home to one of the strongest economies in the world.
This was all pre-'right to work for less' became a mantra to disadvantage employees.
And, on the other side of the equation, imagine someone that needed a job so badly that that’s what they were willing to put up with.
And Disney got away with it for YEARS! People were, according to the article, routinely transferred to other jobs, or just fired.
Yeah, but it’s not like the SEC is going to go, “OH, we’re sure you can do the thing you can do without affecting shareholders!” The moment it’s announced, the next news story will be “SEC investigating…”
Perhaps “restrictions” should be “consequences”. Because, it doesn’t matter what it is, if a company is making a decision to add $4,550,000,000 to their costs in a fiscal year and aren’t offsetting that in growth or cuts to costs in other areas, there are going to be a good number of folks restricting that until they find out more and may end up rejecting the decision.
This is literally showing exactly why a union makes sense. These is only happening because they have talked about unionizing, and there is no clear indication of why this is happening all of a sudden outside of it being a response to their fear of a union.
In Apple Retail, employees are expected to work on weekends. Full-time employees will be able to select a dedicated weekend day off (ie, Saturday or Sunday) every 6 months, presumably having to pick the dedicated weekend day off every 6 months.
That's my read, anyway.
Unions are certainly up there as one of the primary reasons that government workers are so awful. Police unions in the US for example litigate very aggressively to keep bad cops from being fired. Another reason is the lack of a strong chain of command. Top management is typically (always?) either elected or appointed by elected officials, which means they change frequently and probably aren't good business people in the first place. Leads to a culture where everyone just kind of keeps their heads down to stay out of trouble until they can make pension. I recently had to ship something and even though I knew USPS would be cheaper, I went to a commercial shipper because I didn't want to sit in line for an hour while I watch two thirds of their employees fiddle around in the back pretending to work.
Are there any actual examples of the SEC investigating a company for simply giving their employees a raise or is this just bedwetting over nothing?
I'm late to this thread but I'm gonna throw my thoughts out there regarding Apple Retail staff and think it has to be a cakewalk working at an Apple store:
Personally I think Apple Retail employees have it pretty darn good!
- They make a fantastic hourly rate! $25/hour vs. $15/hour as the Minimum Wage
- Unlike most retailers, they are NOT organizing shelves all day, not unpacking boxes, moving items, lifting relatively heavy items, working with dirty/dusty items, working the dreaded Returns Dept, working with Debbie Downer peers who clearly do not want to be at the job, etc. 90% of the Apple store product is literally chained to the tables and walls. Apple Retail staff walk around a 50 foot by 100 foot store asking people if they need help and selling them a device that weighs between 1 and 4 pounds.
- Seemingly from this article, they are given solid and consistent hours...seemingly 30+ hours a week.
- A very high percentage of Apple Stores are open 10am-8pm or 10am-9pm. Those are some great hours of operation because it's not rush hour traffic and many other retailers (at least in USA) are consistently open until 11pm while often opening at 9am.
- Working at Apple actually teaches you how to solve real-world technology problems. Unlike finding someone a Size 4 dress or a lemon scented candle, Apple employees are hearing customer questions about apps, Cloud, integrations, 2FA, computer backups, video creation, Apple ecosystem integrations, privacy, tracking, and a million other technical yet business-problem questions. Employees will not only become Apple experts, but experts in many overall technologies. This is a fantastic skillset to learn, especially if you want to be in some kind of computer science field job down the road.
Personally I think Apple Retail employees have it pretty darn good!
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Hopefully you're not implying a 10-11 hour work day is great hours..... Just the shifts come on/off probably during non-rush hour times.
I remember when 8 hour shifts was the golden standard.....
I do not know how many hours Apple Retailers work, in general. My assumption it was the standard 8-hour-a-day max. Historically over the past 30 years, most retailers in the USA try not to give more than 6 hours a day and also keep employees under 30 hours per week so the retailer does not have to pay benefits. Maybe times have changed in the past few years (aside from covid) and maybe Apple forces a high percentage of people to work 10 hours...but I don't think that's the case because if you worked 10 hours for 5 days that's 50 hours and thus overtime pay.
Anyone here know how many hours an average non-manager works per day at Apple Retail? And how many hours per week?
They can do it by shutting down the store and opening a new one. Problem solved.
That’s not the same as what you originally said. Not to mention the reason Apple is taking the route that they are instead of the route Amazon and Starbucks are is that Apple doesn’t want the horrendous PR associated with such actions. Apple clearly doesn’t want to “solve” the problem by creating an entirely new one. One of the things that contributes significantly to Apple’s success is that the public at large sees them as a “good guy,” accurate viewpoint or not.
In my day (2007-2016) Minimum 32 hrs for full time, though I always did 40. RARELY would anyone work over 8 hrs.
Only problem I had was during COVID. I went in on a scheduled visit to pick out a watch band. I was considering a Macbook Pro purchase as well but the employee was so rude and short with me (encouraging me to hurry up) that I walked out without buying anything.
Good lord did they brainwash you. I always thought such hardcore free market believers only existed in movies..
Report to manager next time. Just say, I would like to speak with you manager please. Not only will that put them in line but prevent future customers from experiencing what happened to you.
I don’t believe any company has simply given their retail employees a total of $4,550,000,000 in increases in a fiscal year. Raises, yes. Raises for retail employees that amount to an increase in operating costs of around 4 and a half billion dollars? No.
Same here...my days of hourly wages was 1983-1993. I started working at 13.
Back when kids learned out to get out there and work for a buck. The only hourly jobs I've ever known that people may have worked more than 8 hours a day (either sometimes or all the time) were retail Managers or people working in restaurants or working for landscapers.