Lawsuit by Apple Retail Employees Over Off-the-Clock Bag Searches Dismissed

[Digital Dude]

Had this passed the court, then all on-the-clock business travelers could maybe file claims against the TSA agents at airports. We now live in a true pantywaist culture. Heck, I broke a nail on a shopping cart so maybe I'm entitled to compensation for pain, suffering and mental anguish.

 

[luiss11]

5 years ago I worked at Best Buy. We had our bags searched also. The ladies had their purses searched. Took about 5 seconds per employee. Apparently these Apple employees have too much time in their hands if they went ahead and started doing accounting calculations for those 5 seconds a day it takes to search a bag.

Babies. Grow up.

 

[AlexNice]

Sounds like you not only haven't worked retail for the past several decades (if at all), but also didn't pay attention when the Supreme Court addressed this very issue recently as well and UNANIMOUSLY AGREED that people aren't entitled to get paid for this time.



So Apple's a bad retailer for using the same procedures in their stores that every other retailer does?



So you want the store to pay your daughter more than the others who work there because she made plans after work which have absolutely nothing to do with the store's function or her job.

Why does your kid deserve more money because she chose to bring a personal bag into a retail workplace? Is she a princess or somehow special? Should everyone else ALSO stay on the clock and be forced to hang out to accommodate your daughter's time waiting because SHE decided that she just HAD to bring in her bag to accommodate HER plans?

Or even worse, why should your daughter basically get to stop working before the others on the shift and NOT do the work the entire time she is scheduled? Why should everyone else have to work their shifts end-to-end while your kid gets to stand in a line and NOT work for the 15-20 minutes? Oh yeah. Because it's a party or something and it's just that important.

No. You can either deal with it, or get another job. Same as everyone else in that industry. You don't need to bring that purse to work. Use your pocket, and if it's too much to handle, get a different job.

Its not JUST about her daughter,
Its about everyone else who get same treatments

5 years ago I worked at Best Buy. We had our bags searched also. The ladies had their purses searched. Took about 5 seconds per employee. Apparently these Apple employees have too much time in their hands if they went ahead and started doing accounting calculations for those 5 seconds a day it takes to search a bag.

Babies. Grow up.

5 seconds is FAST, and should be no Problems

 

[bbeagle]

... "employees at physical locations were required to stand in lines up to 30 minutes long every day for store managers to check their bags ....

Up to can mean anywhere from 0 seconds to 30 minutes. Don't assume it means 30 minutes every day. That's ridiculous.

 

[eebrown]

Up to can mean anywhere from 0 seconds to 30 minutes. Don't assume it means 30 minutes every day. That's ridiculous.

I agree and it should be no problem then for Apple or any other company to do this while they are on the clock.

 

[CFreymarc]

How dare they infringe on the customers personal time by slowing down their exit from the store? Making them seem like criminals by checking their receipts? Oh the humanity...

(yes, the last para was sarcasm. lighten up folks, this argument isn't worth a WWE Cage Death Match... People in other countries fall down LTAO at Americans like these plaintiffs.)

While it may be sarcasm as you claimed, there has been a lot of case history over bag checking while exiting retail stores.

Almost all civil cases have ruled that compulsory bag checking at stores is unconstitutional. It is sited that just walking out from a store with a bag is not probable cause for search.

The only exception is a store with a membership fee where a bag check upon store exit is part of the membership agreement. This is one reason why I do not shop at warehouse clubs.

Whenever I leave a store with a bag, I just wave off the bag checker and refuse the search. I have never been challenged over it.

 

[LordVic]

What can be done to incentivise employers to make the checks in reasonable time? Otherwise employees can be expected to wait on their own time until the employer deigns to make someone available.

Pay them for the time. Trust me, nothing says "lets find the most efficient way to do something" when you put cold hard cash on the line.

 

[unplugme71]

Yeah, real smart. Quit based on not getting paid for a 30 second period of time (about 12 cents). If you prioritize 12 cents over all the other Apple retail perks, well.... that's just strange.

(or keep your '12 cents' by not bringing in backpacks to work)

sarcasm. sarcasm buddy

That's not exactly true...

it's pretty darn close. I always see a ton of apple staff.

Quitting in spite only works if, 1) you create a loss at the company, or 2) there is a publicity that hurts the company over your departure. In this case, an Apple retail employee quits, they are replaced almost that day. Apple is a master of PR spin where the products are more valued than the rank and file employees.

It is not like a strip club where a house favorite quits over a management dispute and her regulars follow her to another club. Yes, I have a classmate that paid her whole tuition this way and lost count of the Sugar Daddy offers.

Yeah - Apple can probably lose 10-15% of their retail sales staff and not be affected. However, lose 10-15% of their tech support, and you'll see a lot of angry customers.

 

[macfacts]

Up to can mean anywhere from 0 seconds to 30 minutes. Don't assume it means 30 minutes every day. That's ridiculous.

What is ridiculous is if someone has 30min for lunch and checking out can take up to 30 min. Fun.

 

[tjrmplsnyc]

In his ruling, Alsup noted that employees could have avoided the searches, as some employees did, by not bringing personal bags to work.

 

[tjrmplsnyc]

It never really seemed to matter whether you had brought a bag or not. The tech you brought with you (cell phones/headphones/any apple store related product really was enough to stop/delay you from leaving until the serial numbers were compared to the serial number you had to submit when you started working there. Also, if you got behind someone who had a hard time finding their tech ID card, you had to wait. There was no way around it.

 

[imaChaser2001]

one more reason not to buy apple again

 

[LordVic]

5 years ago I worked at Best Buy. We had our bags searched also. The ladies had their purses searched. Took about 5 seconds per employee. Apparently these Apple employees have too much time in their hands if they went ahead and started doing accounting calculations for those 5 seconds a day it takes to search a bag.

Babies. Grow up.

LOL. the Irony of your last statement

"they have too much time on their hands"... yes
Thats WHAT THEY'RE COMPLAINING ABOUT! THEY're being forced to stand around, doing nothing, for up to 30 minutes at a time waiting for a manager to do a 5 second check.

so yeah, in those minutes that they're standing around doing nothing waiting, they have too much time no their hands, that they're not being paid for, but can't leave to go do what they want.

and again, the judge ruled that it's their fault. Not Apples. Not the managers who push them aside and tell them to wait. but the employees own fault.

So here, you want them to have less time on their hands to do the accounting on the amount of time they wasted? Don't waste their time. Pay them, and by paying them you keep them on the clock and can expect them to actually work during that time.

 

[zorinlynx]

Also, if you got behind someone who had a hard time finding their tech ID card, you had to wait. There was no way around it.

It's pretty amazing how much distrust Apple has in their own employees. I used to think maybe the Apple Store was a nice place to work retail. But constantly being under the gun suspected of being a thief would make me feel very uncomfortable.

If an employee does start stealing it shouldn't be that hard to find and fire/charge them.

 

[notabadname]

Absolute ********, Apple! Very disappointed in this. Makes me think Apple is a lousy employer for their retail staff.



Which isn't realistic. People lead busy lives. It's not always possible to avoid bringing personal effects with you to work. Sometimes you have things to do after work and have to bring personal effects with you.

If an employer wants to make a bag search part of the routine, then they need to make sure it's done within the parameters of the employee's shift. Outside of that, they are infringing on the employee's personal time. My daughter worked at a very large retailer (who shall remain unnamed) while going to college and they would often times keep her 15-20 minutes after work unpaid waiting for a manager to get a free minute to check her bag before leaving. Expecting that of people is reasonable, but not compensating them for their time is not.

I hope the attorneys representing the employees have other ways to attack this. It's wrong and should be corrected.

Leave your personal effects in the trunk. You know store policies when you accept the job, if you don't, that is the fault of the employee. If people are guaranteed to be paid for their time used in screening, they could next all come with roll-aboard luggage so It takes the employer an hour to screen everyone. Or do we then have to create rules over what size of backpack or briefcase is acceptable. Ultimately, Apple does not require the employee to bring backpacks, so they should not be required to pay to screen voluntarily brought storage items. If the storage/backpacks were a requirement of the employer, or of the job, then yes, the employer has to eat the costs/time. This is not the case. And the searches are reasonable, given the value and quantity of highly pilferable items employees have access to.

 

[NY Guitarist]

How hard is it to implement a bag check-in area? That way searching bags will not be necessary.

It's not hard at all. Quarantine bags in lockers before the employees get anywhere near product, and have the time clock and security at the employee work entrance.

 

[ravenstar]

While it may be sarcasm as you claimed, there has been a lot of case history over bag checking while exiting retail stores.

Almost all civil cases have ruled that compulsory bag checking at stores is unconstitutional. It is sited that just walking out from a store with a bag is not probable cause for search.

I'm not sure how you get a constitutional issue over a private business enforcing bag checks on its customers. If the government were doing it, that's a different matter, but how does the constitution prohibit a business from making that a condition of doing business?

 

[LordVic]

Had this passed the court, then all on-the-clock business travelers could maybe file claims against the TSA agents at airports. We now live in a true pantywaist culture. Heck, I broke a nail on a shopping cart so maybe I'm entitled to compensation for pain, suffering and mental anguish.

Except:

TSA is not their employer.

Their employers are not imposing the waits on the employee.

Strawman argument at it's finest to defence a morally apprehensible (but profit rich) corporate favouritism by the courts

if you want an analogy of your strawman that makes sense

The Malls security does a bag check once you leave the Apple Store. Apple has no control over the Malls security.

but thats not the case here.

HERE. Apple, as the employer is retaining their own staff from leaving.

 

[tgara]

Absolute ********, Apple! Very disappointed in this. Makes me think Apple is a lousy employer for their retail staff.

If an employer wants to make a bag search part of the routine, then they need to make sure it's done within the parameters of the employee's shift. Outside of that, they are infringing on the employee's personal time. My daughter worked at a very large retailer (who shall remain unnamed) while going to college and they would often times keep her 15-20 minutes after work unpaid waiting for a manager to get a free minute to check her bag before leaving. Expecting that of people is reasonable, but not compensating them for their time is not.

I hope the attorneys representing the employees have other ways to attack this. It's wrong and should be corrected.

You may "feel" this way, but there is a large body of federal law directed to exactly this subject. Congress has explicitly excluded such searches from compensable time. As others have pointed out, this was the subject of a US Supreme Court case just last year where employees for an Amazon warehouse sued for exactly the same thing (wait times for searches before they could leave for the day) and lost unanimously. Even the Obama administration sided with Integrity Staffing, the folks who ran the warehouse and conducted the security checks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/b...-worker-pay-for-security-screenings.html?_r=0

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-433_5h26.pdf

The employer in this case required its employees, warehouse workers who retrieved inventory and packaged it for shipment, to undergo an antitheft security screening before leaving the warehouse each day. The question presented is whether the employees’ time spent waiting to undergo and undergoing those security screenings is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938(FLSA), 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq., as amended by the Portalto-Portal Act of 1947, §251 et seq. We hold that the time is not compensable. We therefore reverse the judgment ofthe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The California federal court in the Apple case was simply following the law as written by Congress, as well as Supreme Court precedent. This is settled law. If the attorneys for the Apple employees decide to appeal, they will likely lose.

 

[danakin]

There's nothing unreasonable about Apple, or any other retailer, requiring bag checks at the end of an employee's shift.
If the time required to perform the check is negligible and reasonable then there's nothing to complain about; and, of course, this should be disclosed in the employment agreement.
Not just Apple, all companies need to have appropriate processes and management staffing in place to accommodate what I would term a "reasonable accommodation". If this reasonable accommodation cannot be upheld then the employee should be compensated for the time he/she has to spend to have this completed.
There are many ways to deal with this.

• Have shifts overlap so that the outgoing staff can have their bags checked without sacrificing floor staff count.
• Engage enough bag-checkers to align with staffing levels.
• Determine who came to work without a bag so they don't clog up the routine.

Of course the employee should be ready for the bag check as soon as possible following the end of their shift.
The bottom line for me is this: if you can't reasonably accommodate the bag checks following a shift you have to pay for that time. It's a cost of doing business.

 

[oneMadRssn]

This is why unions are important. This situation has come up in history thousands of times. A company is doing something that is objectively unfair to workers, and workers have no legal recourse because by the letter of the law the action is permitted. What should workers do? Organize a union!

How long do you think it would take Apple to find a way to search employees bags on paid time, and do so using less than 10 seconds of time, if they were threatened with every California retail employee walking out during holiday shopping?

 

[Z400Racer37]

Everyone has a car or even drives?

The even simpler solution would be to just have your butler bring your lunch (with Grey Poupon of course) when it's time to eat.

Then leave your bag at home. Or do you literally eat your lunch out of your bag? Or are you under the impression that they check ziplock bags/containers?

 

[LordVic]

Then leave your bag at home. Or do you literally eat your lunch out of your bag? Or are you under the impression that they check ziplock bags/containers?

I've said it before in this thread: but this reeks of entitlement.

I don't think you realize, that a vast majority of Genius employees are younger people and students. Often travelling for extended periods of time on public transportation.

Do you honestly expect someone to take their transit carrying nothing but a brown paper bag with their lunch in it? have you ever done it?

These are not high paying jobs here. Many retail employees make close too minimum wage. They can't / don't afford their own cars and transport. They can't afford to eat lunch out everyday.

Seriously: if you want little things like these to go away. Pay the employees enough so that they're not worried about these things. Pay them enough so that they're not worrying about their incomes and if they've got the few extra pennies for a sandwich at the mall.

So yes. MANY people are literally eating their lunches out of their bag.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I should add that I'm pretty sure this sort of behavior is illegal in MA. If an hourly employee must be somewhere at a given time as a condition of their employment, there must be compensation for that time. Doesn't matter whether it's a minute or 30 minutes.

I used to work for a waiter temp-agency in Boston, they sent us mostly to large events where food was served like weddings, conferences, graduation parties, fundraisers, etc. Even though it was food service, there were no tips and we were paid a fair $11/hr minimum, that went up with experience. Anyway, they used to have a rule that required waiters to check-in before your shift started. Depending on where the event was, this was either just a few minutes or up to an hour before the shift officially started.

They were sued in MA court over this (among other things), and ultimately had to change their policy and pay everyone backwages for the unpaid time. Well, the company is still around today and doing better than ever. Guess paying employees for those few minutes extra didn't really affect the company, other than having happier employees who are now fairly compensated.

 

[AtheistP3ace]

Just reading the comments this seems a sore subject for people on both sides.