AND LABOR LAWYERS SAY IT’S ILLEGALApple insists it does not have a problem with pay inequality. Skeptical Apple employees have been trying to verify that claim by sending out informal surveys on how much people make, particularly as it relates to women and underrepresented minorities. But the company has shut down three of those surveys, citing stringent rules on how employees can collect data. Now, multiple labor lawyers tell The Verge the company may be violating worker protections: the surveys can be considered a form of labor organizing — under US law, employees have the right to discuss pay.
“Apple cannot bar its employees from discussing pay equity as it relates to protected classes,” says Vincent P. White, a labor lawyer with White, Hilferty & Albanese. “If they were, they could tell people not to talk about pronouns. The logical outgrowth of that doesn’t even track. I view their effort to shut this down as an act of retaliation.”
The first known survey began in the spring and asked people to volunteer salary information in addition to how they identify in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and disability. After about 100 responses, Apple’s people team — the company’s name for what is commonly called human resources — asked employees to take the survey down, saying the demographic questions constituted personally identifying information or PII.
Last week, employees tried to start another pay equity survey but were again told to take it down because it included a question on gender. When they created a new survey without the gender question, the Apple people team allegedly said it had to be shut down because it was hosted on the company’s corporate Box account.
“This is like a 2021 version of a foreman on the docks telling people they can’t compare their wages way back in the 1800s,” says White. “This isn’t new. It’s just the newest version of ‘you can’t talk about your pay.’”
The people team also sent employees the following information on “prohibited surveys”:
Prohibited Surveys
The following employee surveys are prohibited in all cases and may not be conducted.
Surveys as Data Collection
Surveys are not permitted to be used as a means of collecting identifiable employee data without following the usual process to obtain this data from the People team. This includes any questions about an employee’s address, demographics, and so on, except for collecting country or region, which is permitted.
Using surveys as a tool to collect health information — including but not limited to health reports, testing results, and vaccination status — is also prohibited.
All requests for identifiable employee data must be submitted to the People team via the People Report Request Form. If approved, the People team will provide the employee data directly from their systems.
Surveys Requesting Diversity Data
Diversity data is highly sensitive personal data. If you have a need for such information, you must work with your I&D Business Partner and the I&D Insights and Solutions team before collecting any data.
“Those rules may themselves violate the protected right to concerted activity — while [Apple] might point to these handbook type rules that you’ve agreed to not do this as a condition of employment, that doesn’t mean they can legally prevent employees from doing what they’re doing,” says Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Hastings.
Now, Apple engineer Cher Scarlett has started a new survey on Typeform, which she is paying for out of pocket. “I was looking at levels.fyi (a website that lets people compare salary data across companies) and noticed a few very low salaries in a certain geographic area that was 10 to 15 percent lower compared to other people on the team,” Scarlett says. “Every time I looked at gender, they were women. I’m not going to say that’s a definitive issue, but it’s prompt for anyone to ask if this is a widespread problem. We should be able to easily find out whether or not that’s the case so we can know whether people are truly being paid fairly.”
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