A federal judge in California has approved Apple Inc.’s $30.5 million settlement in a nearly decade-old lawsuit that alleged the company defrauded 15,000 retail workers by failing to pay them. the time spent at security checkpoints after their shifts.
District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco on Saturday approved the settlement in the 2013 class action lawsuit. The California Supreme Court in 2020 used the case to rule that state law requires employees to be paid when they go through checkpoints. mandatory security.
Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are also among the top US employers facing similar lawsuits. Amazon and an employment agency agreed last year to pay 42,000 warehouse workers $8.7 million to settle one such case.
The plaintiffs in the Apple case alleged that retail workers often waited several minutes after clocking in, and sometimes longer, to have their bags searched before being allowed to leave the stores where they worked.
Apple and attorneys for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Alsup had dismissed the case in 2015, saying the workers were not under the company’s control during security checks because they were not required to bring personal items to work that needed to be searched.
A federal appeals court asked the California Supreme Court to decide whether time spent on post-shift checks had to be compensated under state law.
The state court ruled in 2020 against Apple, saying it was impractical to expect employees not to bring personal belongings to work. The federal court then revived the case, and Alsup said last year that he planned to grant summary judgment to the plaintiffs and order a judgment on damages.