Apple vs. Its Workers

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Apple vs. Its Workers

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Several large American companies have received sharp complaints from their workers about pay and working conditions. The most well-covered of these by the press are Amazon and Starbucks. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the latest case is with Apple.
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The National Labor Relations Board investigators say Apple prevents some of its employees from disclosing the compensation and “engaging in other protected activity.”
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Apple is an odd target. Its employee relationships have generally been considered good. However, in the specific case mentioned, the villain was Tim Cook, Apple’s long-time CEO. He was accused of communicating to workers about information leaks. Confidentially, the argument says, it is a breach of the ability of an employee to share information, which to one extent is personal. That includes information on compensation. (Click here for the American tech companies that laid off the most workers last year.)

Apple is fortunate, compared to most companies that face similar charges, in that its brand is pristine and almost universally admired. A small dispute with a few employees will not hurt that at all.
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The lack of a long-term effect proves the value of brand strength. Some companies have seen tremendous erosion of this because of behavior. Meta Platforms suffers from this more than any other large public corporation.
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Apple is one of the few companies worldwide that has not had a reputation challenge in years. This may be because management behavior has triggered these problems. Or it may be that, because Apple products are widely admired, any form of scandal will not matter, now or in the future.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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