Apple Store employees do not trust the development of the parent company - they began to communicate through smartphones on Android, fearing the disclosure of correspondence from management, according to the Washington Post. According to them, the iPhone has a vulnerability that gives access to the owner's data. Why you should be afraid of surveillance through the iPhone, even if you do not work for Apple - in the material.

There is no more trust

Employees of Apple Stores in the USA began to refuse iPhone smartphones due to a conflict within the corporation. These workers switched to Android smartphones to covertly discuss unionization.

According to The Washington Post, employees of the tech giant are unhappy with the unwillingness of top management to increase their salaries in view of rising inflation.

According to activists, the leadership on the ground obstructs attempts to form a union, and also tries to listen in on their conversations, pretending to be doing something else.

To avoid detection by store managers, employees meet secretly and communicate via encrypted messages. And they use smartphones on Android, a competitor of the iOS operating system. They are afraid of surveillance through gadgets by Apple.

Employees also described how managers have already begun having one-on-one conversations with colleagues about how unions will harm employees, cut their wages and force Apple to take away their benefits and career development.

Why you should refuse

Not only Apple and other tech giants can monitor their employees, but also the most ordinary organizations that have nothing to do with the production of smartphones or software, says Ivan Samoylenko, managing partner of the B&C Agency communications agency.

The analyst said that many companies have special privacy requirements: for example, linking your smartphone to a work account, after which a lot of things become available to the company - personal correspondence, calls, social media data, videos and photographs.

“This is not to mention the fact that the company can install video cameras in the homes of its employees remotely (however, managers refute this information),” he added.

He warned that the publication of posts on social networks during working hours and impartial statements of employees about the company are regarded as disloyalty, and may serve as a reason for dismissal.

“The average employer has long had certain standards for checking and tracking various employee data: HR departments look at the social networks of their employees, control various statements or monitor the posting of resumes on job search sites,” the specialist added.

According to him, Apple employees, as employees of a technology company, are prohibited from many things. All this is spelled out in special documents that employees sign when they are hired, Samoylenko specified.

“Switching to another software is an attempt to protect employees from being tracked by the company. But it is worth considering that in the era of digitalization, any gadget becomes a source of information leakage and surveillance of absolutely any person,” the expert said.

He concluded that it would not be possible to completely protect his life from interference, only if he did not use a mobile phone and social networks.

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Salaries do not keep pace with inflation

Apple stores employ more than 65,000 people. Sales through Apple's retail stores and website were $366 billion, or 36% of the company's total revenue in fiscal 2021, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Employees complained that their salaries did not rise, despite the growth in corporate income. Currently, they earn from $17 to $30 per hour (from 1.4 thousand to 2.4 thousand rubles at the current exchange rate) and receive employment from $1 thousand to $2 thousand (from 79 thousand to 158 thousand . rubles at the current exchange rate) in the form of shares.

According to them, Apple's hourly rates most often match those of other stores in the regions where they operate. However, these companies are not tech giants like Apple. Due to inflation, workers are actually making less money than when they were hired.

“I have many colleagues and friends whom I sincerely love, but they do not earn enough to live with dignity. We work for a company that has the resources to take care of them,” said one of the union supporters.

Apple Store employees hope that once the first store successfully unionizes, others will follow, and there will be a domino effect - mass unionization will begin within the company.

Resentment mounts

Employees at two Apple Stores in the US reported that they had already received support from national unions and began preparing an application to the national labor relations council. Employees of six more outlets announced that they intend to launch this process in the near future.It is noted that not only retail workers support the creation of the union, but also software engineers and product managers who work within the corporation.

Some employees donate to the Colleague Solidarity Fund, a special organization to help critics of Apple. The support is covert because employees fear retribution for such contributions.

Earlier, Apple fired software engineer Cher Scarlett. She urged employees to share their salary in a special document to identify possible differences. The company did not connect the dismissal with the initiative in any way, but Scarlett herself is sure that she was expelled precisely for trying to reveal the difference in salaries.

Scarlett noted that she is in contact with the organizers of Apple retail stores and supports their efforts. “If the richest company in the world doesn’t pay its workers enough to keep them alive, then who will?” — concluded the programmer.

bbabo.Net