The NLRB has filed a complaint against Apple. The former engineer who co-founded #AppleToo explains why it’s important.

• The NLRB has filed a complaint against Apple for labor law violations and retaliation.
• Cher Scarlett, a former Apple engineer, has filed suit after she says she faced retaliation.

The National Labor Relations Board has filed an unfair labor practice charge complaint on Nov. 1 alleging that Apple violated federal labor law and retaliated against employees who discussed pay and working conditions.

The prosecutor in the case, Cher Scarlett, is a former software engineer on Apple’s security team. She was a leading organizer of the #AppleToo movement that helped launch an anonymous survey and a website for Apple employees to share stories about pay disparities and harassment.

Scarlett said she left Apple in November 2021 after facing retaliation for creating the pay survey and harassment for her organizing efforts. She added that employees are not part of a union and were not allowed to collectively present the results of their findings to HR. She was also told to take a medical leave of absence and offered a severance agreement.

“I’m not saying everyone should share their wages, but the fact is it’s a personal decision about what you want to share. It’s not a business decision,” Scarlett told Business Insider.

Scarlett filed the first of her three charges against the company with the NLRB in September 2021.

The new complaint, which consolidates her three charges, is the first step in the board’s litigation process after the board investigated and found merit in the unfair labor practice charges. If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, a hearing will take place in Oakland in June.

According to the consolidated complaint copy that BI reviewed, the NLRB found that Apple created a culture of surveillance by telling employees not to speak to the press or post online on social media about pay disparities. The board also said the company selectively banned the creation of Slack channels to discuss working conditions.

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protects employees, even if they are not unionized, from engaging in concerted activities “for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”

The NLRB found in the complaint that Apple enforced an overly broad confidentiality rule and “constructively” discharged Scarlett by making her continued employment conditional on ceasing these Section 7 activities.

The complaint included remedies such as requiring Apple to post an official board notice in its office electronically explaining the rights granted by the National Labor Relations Act, and having managers and employees receive NLRB training on their rights as workers. If an injunction is issued, Apple would have to change the rules so as not to interfere with employees’ Section 7 rights to organize.

The NLRB General Counsel also seeks an order to reinstate Scarlett to her former position, to compensate her for the financial losses she suffered as a result of the unlawful termination, and to provide a neutral job reference . Scarlett told BI that Apple and the NLRB have discussed a possible settlement, and that those talks have not yet been successful.

The NLRB declined to comment. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

A culture of silence

Scarlett’s case is one of many unfair labor practice complaints from former Apple employees.

The NLRB filed complaints last month in two other cases alleging Apple required employees across the country to sign illegal confidentialityconfidentiality and non-compete agreements. The board also said that the company limited use of social media by employees and Slack to advocate for better working conditions. These cases will be heard by an NLRB administrative law judge in Oakland in February of next year.

Although Apple told the SEC that it is its policy not to use strict confidentiality clauses following allegations of harassment or discrimination, Scarlett showed this was not true when she came forward to BI in 2021 and broke her NDA.

In 2021, Scarlett filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC over what she described as “false statements or misleading representations” from Apple to the agency. Shortly afterwards, under pressure from activist investors, Apple agreed to “make improvements and clarifications” to its use of NDAs and said it would not enforce agreements like Scarlett’s.

California, where many Apple employees are based, has seen the adoption of laws such as the Silenced, no more action prohibits companies from preventing employees from speaking out about discrimination and intimidation.

“Decades later, the same things that women in Silicon Valley fought for, for recognition and equal pay and like not being sexually harassed and all that, are still fighting for today,” Scarlett said.

Many Silicon Valley tech workers have said companies are forcing them to sign strict confidentiality agreements which create a culture of silence and prevent employees from discussing working conditions such as pay differences. The culture of preventing employees from talking about pay differences mainly affects women.

The #AppleToo The survey, which Scarlett said received nearly 4,000 responses from 147,000 employees, found that women were paid 6% less than men in 2020.

Evan Starr, an assistant professor of management at the University of Maryland, said companies don’t want workers to talk about wages “because they don’t want the workers to necessarily be in a union, and they don’t necessarily want to respond to coordinated wage demands. among the workers.”

The future of labor organizing in Silicon Valley

The NLRB has received an increase in unfair labor practice filings from technology workers. Employees at Microsoft, Googling, Amazonand De New York Times have urged efforts by unions to address working conditions.

“When we talk about labor law, we’re really talking about unions and hourly labor, such as retail, frontline and service workers,” Scarlett said. “When you couple this with corporate employees, and especially high-level software engineers who have been there for a long time, you really see that labor issues are not just issues that are faced every hour per person. It goes further than that. They are technology workers. It’s everyone you know who’s in charge. worker.”

Scarlett and other employees created #AppleToo, modeled after the #MeToo movementto encourage more employees to share stories about instances of discrimination, inequality, sexism and racism at Apple. Movements like #AppleToo reflect increased pressure from technology workers, who expect more transparency from employers.

“I think technology is at an interesting crossroads,” said Matthew Bodie, an employment law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. “People are looking ahead to their careers. They’re not necessarily looking to spend their entire career in one place, especially if you have employees who have more power than the organization, like a software engineer who can be valuable to others companies.” someone wants to say something.”

Scarlett said it was difficult to find work after becoming a whistleblower, despite having more than two decades of developer experience at places like Webflow, USA Today and Activision Blizzard. Last year, the NLRB filed a complaint against Mozilla because he refused to hire her. Scarlett said tech workers may worry about being blacklisted if they pose as whistleblowers.

Despite these challenges, Scarlett hopes to make progress. She said she would not quit her work as a labor activist just to get a job.

Scarlett added that this work “gives the next people facing these problems the power to hold Apple and other Silicon Valley companies accountable.”