Apple hit with class action for gender bias

Two Apple employees sued the Big Tech giant in a proposed class action on Thursday, alleging gender-based pay discrimination, biases against women in its performance evaluation system, and a hostile work environment.

The complaint, filed by Altshuler Berzon and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in the California Superior Court, County of San Francisco, encompasses more than 12,000 current and former female Apple employees in California.

Jim Finberg, an attorney representing the plaintiffs at Altshuler Berzon, said that over 80 women were interviewed in the course of preparing the claim.

Plaintiffs are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, wages and compensation owed to them “for work during the Class Period,” and liquidated damages. They claim that Apple’s wage policies violate the California Equal Pay Act, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, and the Unfair Competition Law.

The named representative plaintiffs are Justina Jong and Amina Salgado. According to court papers, Jong is a customer/technical training instructor on Apple’s Worldwide Developer Relations/App Review team and Salgado is currently working on temporary assignment with the People Team as a Development Manager in the AppleCare division.

Prior to 2018, states the complaint, Apple set starting compensation for employees based on their pay at previous jobs—a practice that “perpetuated historic pay disparities between men and women.” Apple’s current policy asks applicants to provide their pay expectations instead, which continues to have a “disparate impact” on women’s starting salaries and sets them up for insurmountable wage gaps for the rest of their employment at the company, the claim argues.

“Raises at Apple perpetuate and widen the gender pay gap because they are based on a percentage of the employees’ existing Apple base salary—so the longer a woman works at Apple, the larger the gap in compensation she receives compared to similarly situated men, even men performing substantially equal or similar work in the same job position,” wrote attorneys for the plaintiffs.

According to the complaint, Jong—who has been employed at Apple since 2013—was “paid less at Apple than men performing substantially similar work” after disclosing her prior pay at the time of hiring. The claim states that she also experienced sexual harassment by another colleague and that Apple subsequently refused her request to transfer to other teams. Salgado, an Apple employee since 2012, received a higher salary in 2023 after she complained to Apple about gender-based pay disparities, but alleges that Apple did not compensate her retroactively for her previous work.

Apple, which is headquartered in Cupertino and maintains a corporate office in San Francisco, declined to comment.

In addition to base pay gaps, the claim asserts that Apple routinely discriminates against women in its performance evaluation metrics, which also impacts their salaries on a long-term basis. Finberg said that supervisors tend to view traits like “assertiveness” favorably in men and unfavorably in women.

“And then they also have this tap-on-the shoulder talent pool, or all-star pool, and that appears to go to the more ‘assertive’ and generally male people who get on a fast track and get higher bonuses,” said Finberg. ”So it’s a combination of a discretionary system that’s subject to stereotypes that results in males faring better. So you start lower, you stay lower, and then the gap widens.”

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Joseph Sellers, an attorney representing the plaintiffs at Cohen Milstein, said that this case is particularly important because, as an “industry leader,” Apple’s pay protocols provide a “role model” for other companies in the tech industry. He added that pay discrimination is “one of the most undetected forms of bias in the workplace today.”

“First of all, businesses … generally discourage employees from talking about their pay,” said Sellers. “The National Labor Relations Act actually prohibits employers from blocking employees from talking about their pay. But that hasn’t stopped most employers from making it either difficult, if not impossible for employees to do this.”