Apple bag check lawsuit granted class action status

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Apple bag check lawsuit granted class action status

July 18, 2015 11:24:27 am

[JURIST] The US District Court for the Northeastern District of California [official website] on Thursday ruled [opinion] that Apple [official website] retail workers may pursue a class action lawsuit against Apple for failure to compensate them for time taken to have their bags searched. The ruling by US District Judge William Alsup [official profile] grants the motion of the plaintiffs to certify a potential class of over 12,400 former and current hourly-paid, non-exempt specialists, managers and “genius bar” employees who have worked in one of Apple’s 52 California stores since July 25, 2009. The complaint filed by five Apple employees concerns the retailer’s requirement that employees have their bags searched prior to leaving each day to ensure that no one has stolen anything from the store and states that the practice is both time consuming and demeaning. The issue in the case is whether the time waiting for these exit searches to be completed was compensable under California law. Apple argued that the case should be be tried on a class-wide basis as the store’s written search policy was not uniformly followed and that some managers chose not to follow said policy. Apple admitted, however, that the company had nothing in writing granting such discretion to the store managers. The case will be litigated [Courthouse News Service report] under the assumption that employees brought bags out of personal convenience. Those who wish to litigate special needs for a bag at work will be invited by the class action to intervene or opt out, if they prefer.

This lawsuit began in 2013. Most of the plaintiffs’ claims were dismissed [order] by Alsup following the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk [opinion, JURIST report] that security screenings are not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) [DOL backgrounder]. The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling reversed a decision by the Ninth Circuit ruling that the time spent by employees for after-hours screenings to guard against warehouse theft qualifies for overtime pay under the FLSA as amended by the Portal-toPortal Act [DOL backgrounder, PDF]. Counsel for the employer in that case argued that the screenings were part of egress, akin to punching one’s time card or the changing of clothes [SCOTUSblog op-ed], and the employees should not be compensated. The attorney of the workers asked the court to consider a two part test to determine whether 1) the screenings are work and 2) whether the screenings are conducted for the employer’s benefit. According to his argument, if the answer to both of these questions is “yes,” screenings should be defined as work and the employees should be compensated.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.