A group of Apple employees have accused the big tech giant of racism in its push for the company’s employees to return to the office, saying a return to in-person mode would make the company “younger, whiter, [and] More male dominated.
The employees, organised under the newly formed Apple Together group, said in an open letter Friday to the employees after CEO Tim Cook told them they needed to be in the office two days a week starting April 11. Company petition. Three weeks later, three days a week after May 23.
They wrote that the decision to bring employees back to the office was not due to the “need for in-person communication” as Cook wrote in his letter to employees, but because of the company’s “fear about the future of work, fear of worker autonomy” [and] Fear of losing control.
The group wrote that while Apple “may always find people willing to work here,” the shift back to office work would “change the makeup of the workforce.” [the company’s workforce].
This will lead to decisions about who can work for Apple, not who is best suited for the privilege, the group wrote.
Privileges like “born in the right place so you don’t have to move”, or “young enough to start a new life in a new city/country” or “have a stay-at-home spouse” go with you. “‘
“There are also privileges like being born into a gender where society doesn’t expect most of the care work, so it’s easy to just disappear into the office all day and not do the unpaid work you deserve in society.” Or rich enough to pay others You do your nursing work.
The group advocates for continued remote work models so that “everyone who wants to work at Apple can do so.”
Apple’s diversity has risen significantly during the pandemic, but it’s unclear if that’s due to the company’s shift to remote work.
In 2014, the company’s workforce was made up of 70% men and 30% women, but those ratios have changed—according to Apple’s 2022 Inclusion and Diversity Report, the workforce is now 65.2% men and 34.8% men is female.
The company boasts that it has seen an 87 percent increase in the number of women in Apple’s leadership globally and an 89 percent increase in the total number of women in its workforce.
The company is hiring more minorities than ever in 2021 — that is, 25% of Apple’s leadership positions and 41% of its retail positions are held by black and Hispanic workers.
The picture shows Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.CEO Tim Cook announced that employees will return to the office one day a week starting April 11, then gradually increase to three days a week starting May 23
The group wrote that while Apple “may always find people willing to work here,” the shift back to office work would “change the makeup of the workforce.” [the company’s workforce].People are photographed walking past an Apple retail store in New York City
However, Apple Together’s misgivings go beyond diversity — the group offered five additional reasons for their dissatisfaction with the company’s return to in-person work.
They lamented that the company would force employees to make unnecessary commutes, and pointed to a disconnect between the company’s marketing to customers using its products to work remotely around the world and the treatment of employees.
“If we don’t live, how do we understand what issues of remote work need to be addressed in our products?” reads the letter.
They also mocked Cook’s description of the “windfall of meeting colleagues,” arguing that even before the company was remote during the pandemic, such a peculiar vision was impossible between the company’s 37 U.S. offices.
‘We’re not all in one place. Not only do we have one office, we have many more. Often, our functional organizations have their own office buildings where employees from other organizations cannot work,” they wrote. “This siloed structure is part of our culture. “
In September, while tensions simmering over the company’s return to in-person work before Apple’s plans to bring employees back to work were thwarted by the emergence of a delta variant of COVID-19, Apple engineer Cher Scarlett Cher Scarlett spoke to Vox about this in-person collaboration.
“People think that skateboarders in tech parks are going to bump into each other and come up with great new inventions,” said Scarlett, who joined the company during the pandemic and became an organizing colleague to push for more A leader in remote work. “that’s not true.”
Scarlett was one of two founding members of Apple Together, which first launched under the name “Apple Too” in August, left the company in November and is filing a complaint with the labor council.
She and Janneke Parrish, who was also fired and has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, encouraged employees to bring up stories of racism, sexism or discrimination in the workplace.
A spokesperson for Apple Together told CNN Business that an employee who works in hardware engineering in the Bay Area and asked to remain anonymous told the outlet that there are about 200 employees within the group — a total of more than 100,000 Apple employees in the Bay Area. . U.S.
Apple CEO Tim Cook (pictured) said in an email to employees that employees will need to start returning to the office – but the newly formed employee group Apple Together said this will “lead to decisions about who can serve Apple” The privilege of working” ‘
“There is such a huge disconnect between executive leadership and individuals,” the employee said, “and the further you go in the chain, the more empathy is eroded.”
In its letter, Apple Together said it was easier to collaborate with colleagues in the home office than with the open floor plan in Apple’s new offices.
They also slammed the company’s recent decision to keep employees from different parts of the company and locations in separate Slack workplaces, making it “impossible to create shared community spaces where accidents can happen.”
“We are not asking everyone to be forced to work from home,” the letter reads. “We are asking ourselves to decide, together with our team and immediate manager, which work arrangement is best for each of us, whether in the office, working from home or mixed way.
Apple sent a letter to employees after other tech giants, such as Twitter and Facebook, told their employees they could work from home indefinitely.