A U.S. District Court Judge on Monday approved Apple’s bid to pay out a $30.5 million amount as a settlement over employee bag checks. The legal battle lasted nearly a decade, with the plaintiff demanding that the technology giant should pay overtime to employees for undergoing long bag checks when their shift ends for the day.
According to AppleInsider, the settlement was approved by Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit was first filed in 2013, and Alsup writes the following in his approval.
“The Court finds that the Settlement offers significant monetary recovery to all Participating Settlement Class Members, and finds that such recovery is fair, reasonable, and adequate when balanced against the risk of further litigation related to damages issues.”
To recap, Apple’s retail policy required staff to have their bags and personal belongings checked before they ended their shift. While this would be normal in any retail outlet with a boatload of expensive hardware neatly arranged across various corners, it was argued that retail employees should be paid for the time spent when completing the security checks, which according to one report, lasted for as long as 45 minutes.
Apple has since loosened its grip around this policy, and strangely enough, back in 2015, company CEO Tim Cook was not aware that security checks were practiced at retail outlets. Apple’s $30.5 million settlement will be paid out to a class that includes 14,683 Apple employees residing in California.
The aforementioned amount marks the state’s largest settlement in a security search case. It is not mentioned how long those employee security searches will last now, but given that it was a legal battle that lasted for nine years, Apple would likely have shaved off several minutes for a single employee to have his or her bag frisked inside-out.
Do you think Apple should continue this practice at every retail outlet in the world? Tell us down in the comments.
