The US Court of Appeals
has reversed its judgment that was previously in favor of Apple. The case was
filed back in 2015 by a group of Apple retail workers in California, urging
that they need to be paid if they’re being forced to wait for bag searches.
This is a job requirement that the company doesn’t consider as on-the-job time.

In February, the
California Supreme Court stated that Apple should pay its employees for the
time they’ve spent waiting for their managers and security officers to search
their bags – to deter thefts as per the company policy. This is done before and
after their shift timings. The employees confessed that there were days when
they were forced to wait for 45 minutes for their managers to be available to
even begin the searches.

According to the state Supreme Court, exit searches by Apple are needed practically, take place at the office, require appropriate control, are implemented for the benefit of Apple and are enforced by discipline threat.

After this, the US District
Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California was asked to
reconsider this judgment asserting that some workers were part of the class action
group and didn’t even bring bags or any device to work. Apple said that some
workers “were never required to
participate in checks” so technically the policy never even applied to
them. Alsup is known for being thorough, owing
to his experience in handling cases with tech companies.

However, the Ninth
Circuit has ruled that the actual dispute has nothing to
do with the“time spent by class members waiting for and undergoing exit
searches pursuant to the Policy is compensable as ‘hours worked’ under
California law.”

Hence, the district
court dismissed the summary judgment requested by Apple. The Ninth Circuit has
given specific instructions regarding the compensation of the employees.

Apple has not responded
on this subject so far.