#AppleToo publishes an open letter to Tim Cook, asking for transparent and fair compensation, reinvestigation of discrimination and harassment cases, and more
Among the requests in the open letter are transparent compensation and a reinvestigation of reports of discrimination and harassment.
CNETCarrie Mihalcik
Context & Ripple Effects
The letter moves employee concerns from internal reports into a public set of demands directed at Tim Cook. It follows Cook's 2020 staff memo on racism and donations, but asks for workplace-process changes rather than charitable commitments.
Related coverage shows the issue stayed on Apple's internal agenda: Cook later fielded pay-equity questions at a global all-hands meeting, where some employees were dissatisfied with the response.
First-order effects
AppleToo puts Tim Cook and Apple under immediate public pressure to explain compensation practices and revisit discrimination and harassment reports.
Employees seeking review of past cases gain a shared, specific set of demands against which Apple's response can be judged.
Second-order effects
Apple's employee communications become a more consequential venue for addressing pay equity and workplace conduct, as the subsequent all-hands questions demonstrate.
If employees continue to connect compensation, misconduct reporting, and contractual speech limits, workplace governance becomes a board- and shareholder-level accountability issue rather than solely an HR process.
The pattern points toward more formal scrutiny of how large technology companies investigate employee complaints and document their remedies.
The trend: Employee-led accountability campaigns are pushing workplace equity, complaint handling, and speaking restrictions into technology companies' public governance agenda.
.@ashleygjovik's “advocacy has played a role in the creation of #AppleToo, a movement of anonymous Apple employees on social media who have called for more accountability at the $2.5tn tech group long known for corporate secrecy.” https://www.ft.com/...
Our community in #AppleToo has been working on an Open Letter to our senior leadership. We have some requests. We'd appreciate your solidarity. https://appletoo.us/letter/
Someone asked on Blind “Why not just leave if you feel our rights are being violated?” It's not a feeling. Our rights ARE being violated. I don't believe Apple will change without real accountability, and that's what the NLRB charge is about. Apple isn't above the law.
Funny. We tried exactly what Deirdre suggested when I was there. Things still got shut down when the group tried the “right” way after consulting with the People team. I guess they assume we don't talk to each other? https://twitter.com/...
The internal video from Apple's senior VP of retail & people emphasizes that if an individual has concerns they should raise it to their manager or HR business partner — the unspoken rule being that organizing collectively is likely not encouraged.
Deirdre O'Brien released a video this morning addressing pay equity at Apple. She says she knows “a few” employees have raised concerns but assured staff that Apple has achieved pay equity across gender and race and its approach is “best in class.” 1/
Deirdre O'Brien released a video this morning addressing pay equity at Apple. She says she knows “a few” employees have raised concerns but assured staff that Apple has achieved pay equity across gender and race and its approach is “best in class.” 1/
Whenever stuff like this comes up, I love to tell the story of the time my director at Apple—a very intimidating woman—caught me hosting a dinner for Mac bloggers at WWDC. She took me aside and told me “Let me tell you something about Apple. At Apple it's push—not pull.”
It's interesting to see something like this getting critical mass at Apple. I ended up leaving the company in 2007 due to a toxic boss, and got an intimidating call from Apple legal after I published a blog post speaking vaguely about the situation. https://cherscarlett.typeform.…
The Apple I worked for was so intensely siloed and paranoid that it's difficult to imagine that company embracing things like Slack. Must be a real cultural revolution going on over there. https://www.theinformation.com/ ...
Members in the social Discord of former and current Apple workers, including Corporate, AppleCare, and Apple Retail have prepared an open letter and changes we expect going forward. The letter is open to anyone to sign. https://appletoo.us/letter/ https://twitter.com/...