Apple Retail Employees Getting Smaller Raises of Approximately 4% in 2023

[WarmWinterHat]

Haha no kidding. I’m in healthcare and we actually had a pay CUT during the 2020/2021 winter covid wave. 4% sounds pretty good in comparison 😂

Really?? I work in healthcare too, and I've not had anything >4% since I started here in 2018. During the winter of 2020/21 they were throwing money at us to keep us leaving. Signed a really, really nice two-year retention bonus at that time.

I live in healthcare city, though. If one doesn't get a nice raise, you can just walk across the street and have a new position lined up by the end of the week. There are four different hospitals within walking distance of one-another.

 

[DowsingForPurple]

But the concept of a “living wage” is flawed because not all people have the same cost of living even within the same economic boundaries (I.e. urban areas, as you mentioned). A person choosing to live alone, in a larger apartment, with certain spending habits has higher financial “need” than someone in the same occupation who chooses to live in a smaller apartment, chooses to live with partner/roommates, or chooses to live with family (Which is not historically unusual). The second category can live quite comfortably in those circumstances. And that’s beyond all the other things that factor into financial stability and health.

Sometimes people conflate “cost of living” with “living wage”, but they’re not the same and the first concept also is not entirely unambiguous.

“Living wage” is a political concept that has no use in the real world beyond trying to influence policy, so it’s not useful in this discussion of Apple Store employee compensation.

Crazy idea - just adjust living wage to keep up with the cost of living depending on where people live. This is what happens in London / UK with good businesses. 'YoUrE miXinG uP tHe TeRms - rEeEeEeeeEEee!' is not a helpful or insightful position.

 

[rjw1678]

Not sure what a few employees not approaching a guy who didn't wanna approach them has to do with anything here. Fire all employees because of one bad experience? What??

I did try to approach them and they still ignored me. I should of said that some retail employees need to be fired. Also it was two bad experiences, so learn how to read and learn how to comprehend what you read.

 

[oldMacGenius]

Why is there not one union for all Apple retail employees? That would be real meaningful collective bargaining and not a separate union for every store.

U.S. Apple Stores for the most part are not unionized. It takes a lot of guts just to push ahead to unionize one store and Apple will fight tooth and nail to make sure that the company does all it can to prevent a successful unionization effort in every store that attempts one. The age old argument “HR represents the company, unions represent you” doesn’t resonate with working class Americans who are weary about giving up union dues every paycheck when they already live paycheck to paycheck.

It’s a lost cause to try to convince employees that a union can easily ask for more money or better benefits. The way unionization works in the United States is very different, employers have the upper hand, and each Apple Stores’ workers have to individually decide whether to hold a union vote or not… all while getting pummeled by a company executing their anti union drive with a tried and true playbook. There is no possibility that we’ll see a national groundswell of support for a single union representing all stores unless working conditions decline dramatically, and even then I would not expect to see any significant change in support for union representation.

 

[brofkand]

How does that compare to the unionized store(s)?

My guess is they'll be closed within a year.

 

[Bigkool2inSC]

I have never met anyone that has said..

"I make the right amount of money for what I do"..

no one is ever happy.. always want more and more and more..

 

[nathansz]

Sounds better than my 0% raise though

You should find a better job

Or start a union

 

[oldMacGenius]

I guess at 67 years old that the retail employees feel that I do not exist. As far as I am concerned from my experiences with an Apple Store that the retail employees need to be fired.

I don’t know what Apple Store you patronize, or what day/time of the week you went to the store; but at the 10 Apple Stores I worked for, with the exception of a tourist heavy Flagship, the vast majority of the people who we would see on any given day were seniors. It’s also true that I have worked with some pretty stellar people as equals who were at least 10-15 years older than 67.

I don’t doubt your experience at all, and I know there are good Apple Stores, and terrible Apple Stores, but overall without seniors coming in the stores would absolutely be terribly boring, dead places to work. I am inclined to give the employees the benefit of the doubt here, there are a lot of people doing a number of different jobs- some probably waiting for their appointments to show, and all are dressed the same.

I think firing people is an extreme amount of punishment when people don’t offer you a warm welcome, and absolutely if you did not provide feedback to management about your experience, then everyone has lost the opportunity to understand and correct the situation.

As someone who is routinely invisible to everyone working, with the exception of overly aggressive security guards, I know that it doesn’t feel good to be ignored.

My advice is to always try a different store.

 

[brofkand]

You should find a better job

Or start a union

So he can get a 0% raise and pay Union dues to what is effectively just a PAC. Great idea!

 

[iOS Geek]

Really?? I work in healthcare too, and I've not had anything >4% since I started here in 2018. During the winter of 2020/21 they were throwing money at us to keep us leaving. Signed a really, really nice two-year retention bonus at that time.

I live in healthcare city, though. If one doesn't get a nice raise, you can just walk across the street and have a new position lined up by the end of the week. There are four different hospitals within walking distance of one-another.

Yeah it wasn’t a big one, but still a cut! And I’m not in some tiny hospital in the middle of nowhere, either…heavily populated area and one of the largest hospitals in that area. We merged with a larger system and pretty much got screwed in the process

 

[CosmicTris392]

Still higher than what I got this year

 

[macdisciple]

Now, explain to me, convincingly, why someone at the top end of the scale in the article deserves to make $62,400 annually for tapping on an iPad ….

Well, I doubt they work 40 hours per week. My guess is most work ~20 hours per week for the lowest hourly wage. But sure, I work with many adjunct university faculty or “lecturers” with full course loads making far less than $60k in state higher ed school systems with total state budgets over a billion dollars.

When people complain about corporate profit, I wonder if they realize their retirement incomes may be significantly tied to those profits. Do you know how many funds and ETFs include AAPL?

Something is broken, eh?

 

[cocky jeremy]

Do they actually think they should get like 10+% every year? lol.

 

[macdisciple]

You’re talking about Apple employees that had a part in Apple’s success right? I don’t think it’s too much for them to ask for a little more.

Sure. But do you think they played critical roles in that success. I would buy an iPhone from a vending machine. I saw they get up to $2000k worh of AAPL? Giving ownership of the company to employees seems to be a great way to address employees’ participation in the success of a company.

 

[dannyyankou]

Sure. But do you think they played critical roles in that success. I would buy an iPhone from a vending machine. I saw they get up to $2000k worh of AAPL? Giving ownership of the company to employees seems to be a great way to address employees’ participation in the success of a company.

For me personally, one of the main reasons I stick with Apple is their outstanding support and customer service, so yes, I think they play a critical role.

 

[spcopsmac21]

what kind of sweat shop is Tim Cook running?

Harvard doesn't have an official position on buybacks lol. This is the opinion of one of their professors and there is plenty of room for disagreement with this article (I'm sure from some of his colleagues in HBS as well). Stock buybacks can definitely be the wrong move for some companies in certain situations but the idea that they are categorically bad and obvious manipulation is a fringe opinion. Do you think dividends constitute stock market manipulation?

When Yale publishes something it’s not a fringe opinion. But sure tell yourself that. And Harvard has its own study stating basically the same thing. Look it up, it’s from 2021.
I’ve been investing and trading for 22 years now. And have retired because of it. Sure, enjoy wonderland.

 

[spcopsmac21]

Sure. But do you think they played critical roles in that success. I would buy an iPhone from a vending machine. I saw they get up to $2000k worh of AAPL? Giving ownership of the company to employees seems to be a great way to address employees’ participation in the success of a company.

When you give them a handful of shares a year it doesn’t address any sort of pay gap.

 

[siddavis]

LMAO. That's 'somewhere over the rainbow' thinking. Within the USA, your options are 'struggle here or struggle similarly somewhere else'

I'm sorry, but if Apple Retail Store Employee is literally all that one could possibly do, then one has made poor life decisions. You are correct though, 'somewhere over the rainbow' has been replaced with 'someone else did this to me'.

 

[KanosWRX]

While I think Apple can certainly manage to cover for inflation in pay which is a whole thing in itself.. I also have to say, its an Apple retail job, not a career. If your trying to make a living for a long time off working in an Apple store it probably means your slacking and not trying to better yourself into a more rewarding and challenging position. When I worked retail you were lucky to get a 4% raise that's for sure, inflation be damned. And I certainly didn't get 20 dollars an hour!! Even with inflation it was like half that!

 

[captrlp]

If you don’t believe an entitlement generation exists…just read through this thread.

 

[Mac_The_Ripper]

Crazy idea - just adjust living wage to keep up with the cost of living depending on where people live. This is what happens in London / UK with good businesses. 'YoUrE miXinG uP tHe TeRms - rEeEeEeeeEEee!' is not a helpful or insightful position.

Ahhhh good old London, the business/economic mecca of the world!

 

[Mac_The_Ripper]

LMAO. That's 'somewhere over the rainbow' thinking. Within the USA, your options are 'struggle here or struggle similarly somewhere else'

Wow. With all due respect, if this is really how you feel about the USA, you need to do better.

 

[Razorpit]

It’s only the market value because workers rights have already been eroded away for decades. People deserve more but they don’t have to power or protections necessary to get it.

There are millions of illegals coming over our southern border. You think things are bad now, wait a few years.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

There are millions of illegals coming over our southern border. You think things are bad now, wait a few years.

I'm more concerned about slugs on my tomato plants than illegal immigration. It's a convenient political talking point to distract voters from the fact that the federal government is doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. The president, senate and house are all blowing smoke up your bum and you're smoking bowl after bowl of it. Taxes, entitled boards of directors and Wall Street and taking 5 out of every 7 cookies on your plate, and the elected politicians are blaming illegals for stealing them.

I say this as a very not struggling grandson and husband to elected politicians.

 

[nathansz]

There are millions of illegals coming over our southern border. You think things are bad now, wait a few years.

I wasn’t aware that Apple stores in the US were staffed by undocumented migrant workers