Cher Scarlett, a leader of #AppleToo, says she is no longer withdrawing her NLRB complaint against Apple after it failed to execute a settlement in good faith
history made!!!] Cher Scarlett / @cherthedev : On 9/2/21, I sent a list of 4 demands to Apple. One was a company-wide memo clarifying employee rights including discussing pay & working conditions. After months of fighting, they agreed to do it as part of a non-board settlement. They only posted it the week everyone was off. https://twitter.com/... Ashley M. Gjøvik / @ashleygjovik : @timnitGebru One issue with how secretive Apple is, is the lack of transparency into their policies. This is one of the reasons my NLRB charge tackles Apple's entire employee handbook. Also, my retaliation charge argues Apple doesn't stand by their polices, or the law: https://twitter.com/... @trezycodes : In my timeline this afternoon I am being inundated with tweets about... - @CherTheDev holding Apple accountable - The first successful Starbucks store unionisation - Activision/Blizzard/King workers going on strike It's gonna be a goooooood day. Links in thread. 🥰 Timnit Gebru / @timnitgebru : “Scarlett says. Further, it was removed by the following Monday when most people were back at work.” They don't seem to miss any opportunity for a blatant display of power & disregard for the law. They do it because there are no consequences for them. Cher Scarlett / @cherthedev : @AppleLaborers If you're an Apple worker who needs support, or wants to give support — please join us at https://appletogether.org/. We have financial resources ( https://coworkerfund.org/...). Legal resources. Camaraderie. And best of all — we have a strategy that we've been working on together. Timnit Gebru / @timnitgebru : “One of the requests I made was for there to be a very public, visible affirmation that employees are allowed to discuss their workplace conditions and compensation, both internally and externally,” @cherthedev https://www.forbes.com/... @angelauyeung : Scoop: Ex-Apple engineer Cher Scarlett, who quit in November after a “private settlement” w/ the company, is no longer withdrawing her NLRB complaint against Apple. She says the company did not meet its end of the bargain. More details in story: https://www.forbes.com/... Thanks: @helenaspopkin
Context & Ripple Effects
In November, Cher Scarlett reached a private settlement with Apple: she would leave the company and withdraw her NLRB complaint, with Apple agreeing to post a company-wide memo clarifying employees' rights to discuss pay and working conditions — one of four demands she had sent in September. That deal is now broken from her side of the table: she says Apple only posted the memo during a week when most staff were off, and she is no longer withdrawing the complaint filed as part of the November settlement.
The reversal matters because Scarlett is not acting alone — her #AppleToo co-organizer Ashley M. Gjøvik has a separate NLRB charge aimed at Apple's entire employee handbook, so a revived Scarlett complaint keeps pressure on the same policy surface from two directions.
First-order effects
- Apple's quiet-exit strategy fails: instead of ending its NLRB exposure by settling with Scarlett individually, the company now faces an active federal complaint it had already paid to make disappear.
- Scarlett regains leverage outside Apple — no longer an employee bound by the settlement, she can press the complaint publicly while continuing to organize around #AppleToo.
Second-order effects
- Gjøvik's broader handbook charge gains a second front, making it harder for Apple to contain labor scrutiny to any single leaver's case.
- The failed execution sets a cautionary precedent for other companies negotiating with individual complainants: a settlement that looks like compliance but lands quietly may not buy the legal peace it promises.
Third-order effects
- If individual settlements keep collapsing this way, big-tech labor disputes shift from private exits toward formal NLRB adjudication of company-wide policies — a trajectory the corpus already foreshadows in the NLRB's later finding that Apple's executive comments and staff policies violate workers' rights (NLRB ruling).
The trend: Tech-worker labor complaints are migrating from confidential individual settlements toward public regulatory adjudication of company-wide employment policies.