2023-08-18 12:39:50
Since the beginning of August, several employees of several Apple Stores have been mobilized and called for a strike. They blame their company for poor personnel management and a lack of staff. This while stores are preparing for the arrival of the iPhone 15 in just over a month.
The Apple Store 5th Avenue, for illustration // Source: Nathan Le Gohlisse
Three Apple Stores concerned, but at least two others might join the call for mobilization launched by the unions. Employees are making several demands in this movement: understaffing, salary increases that are not high enough and lack of control over schedules.
A social mobilization in the Apple Store which rumbles
The movement starts from a call for the mobilization of the CFDT Apple R, branch of the union dedicated to the Apple Store, launched on August 4, as we can read on X (new name of Twitter). The appeal indicates that employees would experience a decline in their professional and personal quality of life.
Source : Frandroid – CFDT Apple R via X
The CFDT Pomme R adds that “ recruitments are impossible and departures are more and more numerous, resulting in the exhaustion of the remaining teams “. Still according to the union, this might be explained by a drop in footfall in the stores, the fault of ” an increasingly competitive economic environment and Apple’s pricing choices.
Unions unite once morest Apple
Several claims have been made by staff representatives once morest Apple Retail, which is the subsidiary managing Apple’s physical stores. They point to dysfunctions in the company’s social policy, as reported by Release.
Unionized employees explain that they have negotiated in recent months with their employer, in particular for a salary increase. If that had paid off in 2022, it doesn’t seem to have in 2023, which would erode their purchasing power. They demanded a 5% increase, to be offered 4% during the mandatory annual negotiations which are still in progress. For Albin Voulfow, “ About ten years ago, we made a very good living working in the Apple Store. This is no longer the case “, he confides to Release.
Apple Store à Taipei, Taiwan // Source : Andy Wang
Unions accuse Apple of reduce our quality of life once more and once more by imposing even more Saturdays worked on us “. Alongside the CFDT, we find the CIDRE as well as the CGT, which join forces to denounce the lack of staff, but also the lack of benefits for employees in the Apple Store. According to them, it is cheaper to buy the brand’s products on the Internet than in stores, even with the 17% discount for employees.
Besides that, they are several to denounce the lack of manpower. Many departures have not been replaced since the Covid crisis. Tim Cook had actually decided to reduce the physical presence of Apple.
Saturday strikes at Apple Stores
This mobilization starts in particular from the Apple Store of Part-Dieu in Lyon. As the media columnist Romain Blachier reports in Lyon Mag« every Saturday, the doors of the local embassy of the Cupertino company will close prematurely, because of a centralizing management. “Schedules would be dictated” from Paris, taking employees away from their daily realities. ” In Lyon Mag always, we learn that Apple Store workforces have fallen from 2,600 to around 2,300. »
The Apple Store at the Carrousel du Louvre
On his side, Release reports that out of Apple’s twenty physical stores in France, three experience strikes on Saturdays, ” employees stopping work following their midday break or altogether all day, sometimes forcing stores to close early. “After a first strike at Part-Dieu in Lyon on August 5, it was the other Apple Store in the city, that of Confluence and the Dijon store that joined the movement. The striker rate rose to 60% according to newspaper information. CFDT national delegate Albin Voulfow told the latter that the Apple Stores in Bordeaux and Aix-en-Provence might join the mobilization.
However, important periods are coming: in a few weeks, the start of the school year, but also the iPhone 15 would be on the shelves and in a few months, the Christmas period. Contacted by us, Apple reminds that a negotiation on working time is still in progress within the company.
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