Good news, Apple retail employees! You’re getting free meetings!
Wait, that’s not good news. That’s bad news.
“Apple holds nationwide meetings with retail workers to ‘discuss the risks of unionization’”
You may be asking yourself “Is Apple seriously still doing this?” Well, it is not not doing it, that’s for sure. You may further be asking yourself “Is the company still on its baloney?” The answer to that is, not only is it still on its baloney, it’s frying it and putting it on Wonder Bread with mayonnaise.
Somewhere in the depths of internal communications some poor soul is slaving over a hot stove with an iPhone video rig and some eggs and mumbling “This is your brain. And this is your brain on unions.”
(As an aside, apart from the pointlessness of the exercise that was The War on Drugs, what a stupid commercial that was. “Oh, look, a fried egg. Isn’t that horrible?” No! Fried eggs are amazing and they go on everything.)
Well, at least it’s just retail unions Apple hates and otherwise, it’s very progressive in its-
“Apple ‘Tracking Employee Attendance’ in Crackdown on Remote Working”
Oh, come on! The Macalope didn’t even get through his contrived lead-in sentence!
According to Mark Gurman, Apple is monitoring corporate employee attendance for the required three days a week in-office at the same time it has removed a “special sick time” provision for Covid for retail employees, requiring them to use regular sick days for any Covid illness. Pandemic’s over, meat sacks! Time to get back into the mall where no one is masking!
C’mon, you certainly don’t expect the richest company in the world to foot the bill for increased risk in the workplace, do you?! In this economy? And if you chew through your year’s worth of sick leave getting covid once, well, it’s not like you’re going to get it again in a few months! Ha-ha!
[pulls at collar, grimmaces]
As if all this weren’t bad enough, anyone violating these policies can be fired and the company is not always re-filling the positions, allowing it to do de facto layoffs without having to declare them or give severance pay.
To be fair, who hasn’t wanted to break up with someone and be able to say “It’s not me, it’s you.”?
Apple, for so long the underdog, has now become the poster child for not only App Store abuses but regular Store abuses as well.
“An Apple Store Worker Is the New Face of US Labor Law Reform”
IDG
The thing is, as the Macalope has repeatedly said, this is not necessary. Believe the horny one when he says it pains him to point favorably to Microsoft, which-
THE WINOTAUR: Hey, did someone favorably mention Microsoft?!
NO. No. We’re not doing that. Get out of here.
THE WINOTAUR: Aww.
Sheesh. Like a bad penny.
Last year Microsoft committed to working with unions rather than trying to squash them and did just that early this year.
“Video game workers form Microsoft’s first US labor union”
A group of video game testers has formed Microsoft’s first labor union in the U.S., which will also be the largest in the video game industry.
Because of the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it was contractually required to remain neutral on workers organizing, but it went beyond that, greenlighting the union certification process to speed it up.
“They have definitely stood by their word all along,” said CWA spokesperson Beth Allen. “It’s pretty momentous. Microsoft is an outlier in the way tech companies have been behaving.”
You can say that again.
THE WINOTAUR: Are you sure I can’t get in on this?
OUT. OUT.
THE WINOTAUR: Ow! Stop pinching! I’m going! Gawd.
Up until 10 years ago, Microsoft was the company that famously used stacked ranking, the process developed by some VP of HR somewhere who misread The Hunger Games as utopian rather than dystopian. Talk about most improved. While some of its moves are to align itself with Washington state law, it has chosen to embrace them rather than fight them tooth and nail.
Like some other tech companies, the Macalope could mention.
Apple. It was Apple. In case you didn’t get that.