Apple is facing a new legal fight, and this time it comes from some of its former employees. Two former Apple Store workers, one in New York and the other in Los Angeles, filed a class action lawsuit last week that covers thousands of Apple employees. The lawsuit claims Apple owes those workers money for standing in line for as long as 30 minutes a day while the store"s managers conducted personal bag searches to make sure their workers were not stealing merchandise.
The lawsuit, as reported by GigaOM, claims that each Apple worker has lost up to $1,500 a year in wages while waiting in line for these bag searches to be completed. The lawsuit says Apple"s alledged actions are in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, along with other state laws in New York and California. The former workers are seeking an unnamed amount of damages. Apple has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
In August 2012, rumors started up that Apple was quietly laying off some workers at its retail stores and cutting back hours for other employees. A few days later, Apple sent out a statement saying that the company used a new staffing model for its stores that caused the layoffs and cut hours. It added, "Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed."
Source: GigaOM | Image via Apple