It seems like one of the most ‘woke’ companies out there isn’t woke enough for its employees. A group of Apple employees just launched the website #AppleToo, similar to the #MeToo Movement, and would devote its time to collecting stories from employees addressing forms of harassment and discrimination. This would engage Apple workers from the retail level all the way up to corporate.
“For too long, Apple has evaded public scrutiny. The truth is that for many Apple workers — a reality faced disproportionately by our Black, Indigenous, and other colleagues from minoritized racial, gender, and historically marginalized groups of people — the culture of secrecy creates an opaque, intimidating fortress,” the group writes.
They go on to add that when they press for accountability to the injustices they witness or experience, they get faced with a “pattern of isolation, degradation, and gaslighting.” Sounds like the same woke language the company spews to everyone else. While 15 people organized putting together the website, more than 350 people have joined the Discord chat server.
Apple repeatedly attempted to suppress the conversation and shut down a Wage Transparency survey on the site. The site details that the survey aims to offer employees more insight into the company and to “negotiate fair wages and bonuses.”
Cher Scarlett, the software engineer who helped create the survey, talked about Apple’s many excuses for shutting it down. She said that two out of three of the original surveys had been shut down for collecting “inclusion and diversity data,” as well as a third one for being hosted on Apple’s corporate Box account.
“I was told that several managers in retail and corporate filed complaints against me, and that other leaders, and the people team were actively discouraging people from participating in the survey and/or discussing their pay,” Scarlett shared in an email.
Ashley Gjøvik, a senior engineering program manager, shared that she was put on an “indefinite paid administrative leave” after raising concerns about sexism, hostility, and unsafe working conditions.
Apple has even framed many warnings against these “prohibited surveys, calling it an “improper collection” of employee data. While Apple continues to market and collect data on everyone else, they’ve refused to collect on their own employees.
The Apple employees also launched a Twitter account @APplelaborers in order to collect more workplace discrimination and harassment claims against the Tech Giant. They have demanded change within Apple, asking people to contribute their own experiences to the site and collaborate for a healthier workplace.
The surveys pushed the idea that 2,300 people had pay discrepancies by gender and race broken up into mid-level tech workers at “ICT3” and “ICT4” levels. This applies to positions regarding software and services, corporate functions, hardware, machine learning and AI, operations and supply chain, and retail.
The report lists many discrepancies between male and non-male counterparts at the same level and notes that they’ll “need more respondents” in order to compile an accurate portrayal of the salaries at Apple. They have even been considering rallying on increasing wages across the board.
It’s not a surprise that even some of the most ‘woke’ companies aren’t woke enough for their own employees. They’ll keep spouting about ‘unchecked privilege’ and ‘unequal pay’ until they are making what they want, but that’s what happens when you go woke. You can’t do business when you’re walking on eggshells. But Apple should’ve seen that coming.
