#AppleToo started off with just a few Apple employee organizers. However, in less than a week they collected hundreds of stories. Now they’re starting to share those stories. On Medium, Cher Scarlett, one of the organizers of #AppleToo as well as a survey of Apple employee wages. The stories aren’t exactly an easy read, but you can find them in full here. They describe stories of racism, sexism, and inaction on the part of Apple.
Common Themes, Common Inaction
Racism, sexism, sexual harassment, assault, and management that is completely absent until it’s far too late. These are the common themes shared in this first dump of stories from the #AppleToo employee resource. I actually won’t go into details about two of the stories because the people who reported them explicitly asked that their story not be shared, and I think reporting on the specifics would step over a line. Those particular stories, the final two from the #AppleToo Medium article, are especially worth reading. Frankly, they all are.
One person found that, despite working at their job for six years, they couldn’t progress into higher levels or management. After noticing other people experiencing similar problems in the Black at Apple group, they found Apple seemingly did take action. The old Black at Apple team was dissolved, replaced by a team containing two white men and one Black man who worked weekends. They didn’t acknowledge the old team, where people shared their grievances and lack of support from management.
Another person spoke of targeted harassment, a team member who would explicitly exclude them from meetings, not give them access to documents, and wouldn’t invite them out to events with the rest of the team. It was a story of a white guy treating a minority woman worse than she deserves. She similarly found no support from management.
Another employee noted that, over four years with Apple, they witnessed sexual harassment, open racism, and actual “enabling of predators.” Despite complaints, Apple would only fire the problematic employee for an unrelated incident. They witnessed people of color “get in trouble for ‘spending too much time with customers’, meanwhile white employees would not get that kind of treatment.”
These stories all shared the same themes of harassment, racism, sexism, abuse, and, perhaps worst of all, a lack of action on Apple’s part. Bad employees will exist in every company, but when the company doesn’t take action against those bad employees, the company becomes defined by their worst employees. From these stories of current and former Apple employees, that seems to be where the company is at now.